


never been the best (at letting go)

by DivineProjectZero



Category: Leverage
Genre: 5+1 Things, Eliot/Quinn Centric, M/M, Multi, No cheating, Post-Canon, Violence, specific warnings in chapter notes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:01:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 34,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25049587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DivineProjectZero/pseuds/DivineProjectZero
Summary: Watching the three of them, Quinn ruefully thinks that they’re good together. Occupying each other’s spaces as easy as breathing, in sync and utterly smitten with each other. A perfect equilateral triangle.There’s a keen sense of loss echoing in his sternum, but he smothers it. You can’t lose what you never really had.(or: five times Quinn gets dragged into working with the team and one time things go a little differently.)
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer, Mr. Quinn/Eliot Spencer (Leverage)
Comments: 116
Kudos: 253





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Self-betaed. All mistakes are mine. Constructive feedback is always welcome.
> 
> Updates are currently slated to be on Mondays and Fridays. 
> 
> My biggest thanks to Ven and Avian for listening to me whine endlessly about this wretched fic. This fic never would've seen the light of day without your support.
> 
> Title from "Stay" by Zedd and Alessia Cara.

It’s twenty minutes after midnight when Quinn gets a call from an unknown number. He’s busy finishing up a retrieval job involving a dozen angry Estonians and a lot of gunfire, so he ignores the steady buzzing coming from the inside of his pocket and focuses on shooting his way through trigger-happy mobsters. They might have more bullets, but Quinn has much better aim and excellent night vision. 

Fifteen minutes later, when Quinn is walking away from a harbor full of whimpering Estonians with a small package under his arm, his phone rings again. He accepts the call without slowing down his pace. “Speaking.”

“Yo, Quinn. What’s up, man? You busy?” 

It takes him a moment to place the voice, but he hears the rapid tapping of a keyboard and his brain makes the connection easily from there. “Hello to you too, Hardison.”

“Hi, Quinn!” A cheerful voice joins in, and Quinn can’t help the smile that bleeds into his voice when he replies.

“Hey, Parker.”

For a split second, he wonders if there’s going to be a third voice to greet him. Rough and low and warm, saying his name like a caress against his skin. But that moment doesn’t come, and instead Hardison says, “You got anything scheduled for the next week or so? Let’s say ten days, just to be on the safe side.”

He’d been planning on taking the next couple weeks off, but he can tell his vacation is about to be usurped by whatever this crazy team has planned. He’s tempted to refuse; he’s spent six weeks trying to put some distance between him and Portland because he’s always had a bad habit of giving into temptations that are better off untouched, and right now one of those temptations is in the heart of that city. It’s better off if he stays away.

Except Parker says, “We need two hitters for this con, and you’re the best one we know, after Eliot. He won’t work with anybody else.” Quinn can already visualize the way her eyes gleam with mischief. “And it’s more fun with you.”

It’s really unfair, he thinks, that for all that Parker doesn’t quite understand the minutiae of the human heart, she still easily presses all the right buttons to open him up like an outdated safe. There are a thousand ways people have tried to coerce Quinn: torture, bribery, blackmail, you name it, he’s been through it. He’s managed to resist all of them, but somehow his resolve crumbles at the mere mention of Eliot Spencer’s name. 

“Alright.” He slows to a stop, already calculating how long it will take to fly from Tallinn to Portland because he knows that he’ll be going there regardless of the answer. “What terms did you have in mind?”

-

When he arrives at the brewpub late in the morning, he doesn’t let himself hesitate when he pushes the door open and steps in. Doesn’t let his steps falter when he sees broad shoulders and brown hair behind the bar. And he certainly doesn’t let his breath stutter when blue eyes look up and a crooked smile curls along soft lips. 

“How was Estonia?” Eliot asks, gesturing for Quinn to take a seat across from him. 

Quinn obliges. “I’d say the scenery was lovely, but the weather was terrible. Not that different from Portland, if you think about it.” He’s unsurprised when Eliot heads to the back and then reappears with a plate of glazed salmon and grilled vegetables. “But the food here is definitely better.”

“Just the food?” There’s an almost teasing lilt to Eliot’s voice that has Quinn instinctively reaching forward to haul him in and close the distance between them, but he corrects his course at the last second and grabs the plate instead of Eliot’s wrist. 

“And the drinks, too,” he says, managing to muster a mock-innocent grin. He’s rewarded with an amused snort from Eliot, who lets Quinn tug the plate out of his hand. Shaking his head, Eliot goes and brings back a steaming mug of coffee while Quinn starts devouring the salmon. He pours two creamers and a packet of sugar into the mug, then pushes the drink closer to Quinn without a word.

It’s little things like these that make Quinn think that maybe he should have stayed away from Portland. The way Eliot has a meal prepared for him because Quinn is terrible at feeding himself for the first twenty-four hours after a transatlantic flight; the fact that Eliot has the food ready right on time because Quinn comes fifteen minutes early to every business meeting; the casual manner in which Eliot prepares Quinn’s coffee exactly to his tastes like it’s the most natural thing to do in the world. They’re all little things that remind Quinn that Eliot knows him too well.

Knowing somebody’s habits isn’t necessarily meaningful. But Eliot doesn’t just know Quinn; he cares enough to remember the details and act accordingly. It’s comfortable as hell, being around Eliot Spencer. And that’s the scariest goddamn thing, because it makes Quinn want to _stay_ in this godforsaken city.

Which is a terrible idea, because being in close proximity with something he wants? Never ends well.

“Send my compliments to the chef,” Quinn says with a wink when he’s done with the meal. Eliot scoffs, but Quinn can read his pride in the way the corner of his mouth hitches upwards just the slightest bit. 

“Alright, time to get to work.” Eliot motions at one of the servers to take the empty plate and mug to the kitchen, then gestures at Quinn towards the side door that leads into Leverage’s headquarters. It’s a doorway Quinn’s been through a couple times for the rare occasions when he’d been roped into helping out with the team in the past year, but suddenly it feels like foreign territory. Ground where he isn’t sure he’s welcome anymore. 

But Quinn’s bravado and his ability to make choices even when he knows they’ll hurt like a motherfucker are what have gotten him this far in his career, so he strides towards the door and lets himself in, Eliot close behind him. He doesn’t let his grin falter when Parker and Hardison look up from where they’ve been hunched over a laptop.

“Quinn!” Parker breaks out into a giddy smile that has the tension bleeding out of his shoulders before he can help it. “Did you try the salmon? It’s so good! Eliot tried a different recipe for it yesterday and it was even better than usual.”

“I just switched up the glazing a little,” Eliot grumbles, and there’s something almost like embarrassment in his tone, which is interesting, because he’s never been shy about receiving compliments on his cooking. 

Hardison smirks, like he knows exactly why Eliot is edging towards defensive. “Sure, it’s some incredible glazing right there. Totally worth four hours of experimenting with recipes and using us as taste testers. Going all Michelin on our asses.” He turns to Quinn with a huge grin, like there’s an inside joke here that he’s waiting for Quinn to catch on to. “Hope you appreciated our hard work, man.”

There’s a scowl on Eliot’s face that clues Quinn into the fact that maybe he isn’t supposed to know how much effort went into improving this recipe. The implications there make his pulse flutter, but he hides that with an easy smile and an expansive gesture with his hands. “It was definitely worth the price of my flight here.”

Eliot’s scowl subsides with a grumble. “It better have been first class.”

“Business class for the first leg, first class for the second.” He prefers business class, if only because he doesn’t see the point in traveling first class when it’s nearly double the price for very little improvement. He doesn’t say that he paid for first class anyway because it was the only available seat on the quickest flight to Portland from Atlanta. “But I would’ve gone first class all the way for that meal.”

The offer to show his appreciation for Eliot’s cooking in a way that involves Quinn getting on his knees is on the tip of his tongue, but Parker and Hardison are in the room and it feels like a line he shouldn’t cross, not now, so he keeps his mouth shut.

“This job is going to be worth the trip,” Parker promises as they settle down at the table where they run their little information dumps and plans, screens already lit up in front of them. She leans half over Eliot to talk to Quinn, and it’s hard to miss the way Eliot smoothly hooks an arm around her waist so that he can maintain his balance with her weight pressed against him. “We’re going to steal a zoo!”

“Babe, technically it’s not the entire zoo,” Hardison says in the tone of a man who has said the same thing a dozen times already and knows he’s never going to win. “We’re just stealing the data that they’ve been falsifying in their research programs.”

Parker pouts, turning to Eliot, still held in place by his arm. “Can we steal just a little bit of the zoo, then? Like, maybe the tigers and the red pandas?”

“No, Parker,” Eliot and Hardison say at the same time. 

“We are not going anywhere near any animals that can eat me,” Hardison elaborates. “Absolutely not.”

“Fine,” Parker concedes with a huff, and Eliot rewards her with a quick kiss to her lips. That makes her smile again, the corners of her mouth quirking up in satisfaction as she straightens up and Eliot releases his hold on her. She slides into her seat and looks up at Hardison, bumping her shoulder against his hip from where he’s standing next to her. “Okay, run it.”

Watching the three of them, Quinn ruefully thinks that they’re good together. Occupying each other’s spaces as easy as breathing, in sync and utterly smitten with each other. A perfect equilateral triangle. 

There’s a keen sense of loss echoing in his sternum, but he smothers it. You can’t lose what you never really had.

As Hardison starts explaining who their newest mark is, Quinn spares one more glance at the trio, allowing himself a single second to let a faint ache reverberate through him, like pressing fingers to an old bruise. Then he lets it go and turns his attention wholly to the job, like he always does.

-

A month after the deal with Latimer and Dubenich, Quinn had called in the favor Eliot owed him. It had been a messy job with too many complications spanning four countries, starting off in the sweltering streets of Marrakesh and then working their way up north until they finished the whole affair under the rainy skies of London. And as they’d walked in the drizzling rain to their hotel, Eliot had grumbled about how Quinn owed him a favor in turn for this ridiculous job.

_It’s almost like you want an excuse to work with me again,_ Quinn had joked, and Eliot had shrugged, his usual gruff exterior worn down and showing the glimmer of humor and honesty that he always so carefully tucked away. 

_Maybe I do_ , Eliot had said. Wet hair plastered to the sides of his face, strikingly blue eyes meeting Quinn’s without hesitation, the barest hint of a crooked smile on his lips. 

The very sight had knocked the breath out of Quinn’s lungs like a well-placed punch to the solar plexus.

Quinn had taken a careful step into Eliot’s space, close enough for his breath to ghost against Eliot’s mouth, restraining himself from leaning in all the way, and said, _maybe you should ask for something else._

And because Eliot Spencer was a smug, irresistible tease of a bastard, he had tilted his head enough to nearly bring their mouths together and asked, _like what?_

_Ask me to come to bed with you_ , Quinn had said quietly, watching the way raindrops clung to Eliot’s eyelashes, the way the corners of Eliot’s eyes crinkled as he smiled. Somebody could have had a gun to Quinn’s head and he couldn’t have looked away. _Ask me_.

For a quiet moment, Eliot studied Quinn’s face before he stepped back. _I’ll think about it_.

Quinn had hardly felt the disappointment, because Eliot had still been smiling, and the question had felt inevitable. So they had lapsed back into small talk regarding London’s dismal weather and the options they could have for dinner, arguing between traditional Indian cuisine and good old-fashioned pub food until they reached their hotel on the south side of Hyde Park. They’d been soaked to the skin, and Quinn’s first instinct when they returned to their hotel room was to strip out of his damp clothes and take a hot shower.

But then Eliot had said his name, already half a step behind him as Quinn turned around, ready to catch Quinn’s cheek and pull him in for a kiss. 

_Come to bed with me_ , Eliot had said in a low whisper when they broke apart, sending a shiver down Quinn’s spine that had nothing to do with the damp chill and everything to do with the unspoken promises in those words.

So they’d fallen into bed together, taking turns pressing each other into the mattress, chasing the chill away with heated words and rough hands and warm mouths. They’d gone from slow to fast to rough to everything else and every minute of it had been exhilarating. Dinner had been whatever seemed good in the room service options, and the shower had been big enough for the both of them. They’d ended up having sex until late into the night, then had gone for a couple more rounds in the morning before they had to check out and go their separate ways.

And Quinn, satisfied and ready to move onto the next job, had figured that would be the end of it.

Except, Eliot had called him barely a month later, complaining that the team had relocated to Portland and that the lousy weather there reminded him of London. 

_Want something else to remind you of London?_ Quinn had asked, half-jokingly, and Eliot’s eye-roll had been audible through the phone when he’d replied that he didn’t do phone sex. The exasperated tone in which he said those words brought out an instinctive response from Quinn that caught both of them off-guard. _Then how about actual sex?_

He’d been in Chicago back then, finished with an easy job with a decent paycheck, wondering where to go next. Portland sure as hell hadn’t been an option, not until Eliot called him, but then suddenly Quinn had made his decision as he’d checked when the next flight for PDX left. 

_I can be there in six hours_ , he had said. _Ask me to come over_.

So Eliot had asked, and Quinn had gone. He’d arrived at Eliot’s small apartment right in time for dinner, which they’d temporarily forgotten about when Quinn dragged Eliot into the bedroom. Eliot had bitched about it later on, because the roast chicken had ended up too crisp, but it had been Eliot who had decided to not let him out of bed until Quinn forgot his own damn name, so it’d been his fault, too. 

Once they’d agreed to share the blame, they’d talked over their meal and discussed what they’d been up to in the meantime in vague terms. After stowing the dishes into the dishwasher and watching a movie that they both took turns criticizing for its unrealistic action scenes, Quinn had gotten his payback by littering bite marks all over Eliot’s skin, leaving one high up enough on his neck for his team to get a good look at later. The way Eliot had uttered Quinn’s name when he left that mark, breathless and furious and utterly filthy, is something that Quinn remembers vividly even today.

So Quinn had slept in Eliot’s bed, lounged in Eliot’s living room, eaten Eliot’s food, and then left for Caracas in the afternoon with a lingering kiss and a wink.

It slowly started becoming a regular deal, after that. Sometimes Quinn would turn up on Eliot’s doorstep between jobs; sometimes Eliot would call and invite him over when he had time off from conning rich bastards. Mostly, these little rendezvous were meant for sex—and it was fantastic sex—but there was space for other things, too. Like eating together and sharing jokes over the dinner table. Talking about their respective jobs and histories. Learning the stories behind the scars on their skin and filling in the blanks when either of them evaded telling the truth. 

Once in a while, Quinn would turn up with a fresh injury, or he’d come around to find Eliot a little too banged up. Then the sex was put on hold until the other was healed up somewhat, which meant that Quinn would stick around a few extra days until they could have a long, slow fuck. And then he’d be off on his way not long after that, to wherever the next job awaited him.

It was a good system for both of them. No commitment, no strings attached. Just excellent sex and fun times and something like friendship. 

But good things never lasted. Quinn had been quietly waiting for the other shoe to drop, because he’d been invited into helping out on the Leverage team’s cons a few times over the past year, and he’d known that it was only a matter of time before Eliot admitted defeat and accepted that his relationships with his partners were more than professional or platonic. There’d been that sense of inevitability as he watched the way Parker and Hardison bracketed Eliot with eager smiles. The way Eliot hovered around the both of them like he was caught in their orbit and helpless to escape. 

So when Eliot had opened the door of his apartment six weeks ago, a hesitant look on his face as he said that he had something to tell Quinn, the conclusion had been immediate and obvious. And startlingly disappointing.

Quinn had been waiting for it, but he’d still hoped there’d be more time.

He should have known better. The clock is always ticking down for people in his line of work. There never is such a thing as enough time for them.

-

“We should have kept the lemurs,” Parker says longingly.

They’re sitting in the brewpub, which is closed for the night, and Eliot’s set out plates of tagliatelle carbonara and garlic bread on the table for them. He’s sporting a nasty bruise on his cheekbone from where a guy clocked him with a shovel, and Quinn’s ribs are feeling a little tender from how he got head-butted by a goat.

“We definitely do not have the space for lemurs,” Hardison says. “They need trees and stuff, which, y’know. Is not exactly what we have.”

“But they’d make such good climbing buddies.” There’s a wistful look to Parker’s eyes, which Quinn can’t help but sympathize with. He was tempted to steal one of the African painted dogs, especially after watching a pack of them snap at the heels of the hapless henchman Quinn had toppled into their enclosure. That sight alone had almost made this entire fiasco worth it, regardless of the payout. 

Eliot sighs. “Parker, we can go to the zoo again later.”

“Maybe a lot later, when the security guards don’t remember our faces,” Hardison adds.

There’s a faint pout on Parker’s face as she stabs her pasta. “It’s not the same when you’re separated from them by the cage.”

“Okay, hold on.” It’s evident that Hardison is terrible at resisting what Parker wants. He taps away at his phone, then raises an eyebrow. “Well, will you look at that. The London Zoo has an exhibit where you can actually walk through the lemurs’ enclosure. Damn, that’s actually pretty cool.”

Parker gasps. “We should go to London!”

“Great. Now we’re going to have to find a job that takes us all the way to Europe. Dammit, Hardison.” Eliot sighs and takes a sip of his beer. “I haven’t been to London since—”

He freezes, and Quinn inwardly winces. Thankfully, he’s always been a fast thinker on his feet, so he inserts, “Well, I’m definitely going somewhere where there’s actual sunlight this time, so have fun with that.”

“You’re sticking around for a few days, though, right?” Hardison shoots Quinn with a hopeful look, which is weird, because there’s no reason for him to want Quinn around except for business purposes. Quinn is pretty damn sure that nobody wants their boyfriend’s ex-friend-with-benefits hanging around, regardless of how well they’d gotten along prior to the relationship upgrade. “Eliot keeps trying to drag us to fancy restaurants but my palate ain’t refined enough to tell the difference between, uh, everything. You’re a foodie, I know you are, so please go eat the gourmet shit with him so that I don’t have to hear about the difference between calamari and squid.”

“Calamari are a _type_ of squid,” Eliot snaps, and Quinn can’t help but grin. “Standard squid is tougher to chew through, and calamari is smaller.”

Hardison gives Quinn a pained look that screams _do you see the suffering I go through_. It’d be so easy to interrupt and say yes, he’d be delighted to be subjected to some good food and time with Eliot. But just the two of them having dinner at a high-end restaurant strays too close to a territory that Quinn shouldn’t invade, so he gives Hardison an apologetic grin. “I’ve got something else lined up already, so. Raincheck?”

“You’re not staying?” Parker asks with a disappointed twist to her lips, and Quinn hates that he’s lying to her. He doesn’t actually have anything lined up just yet, but he knows he has to get away soon before he does something irrevocably stupid. “You’ll come back though, right?”

Shit, that’s not a promise Quinn should be making. “We’ll see.”

She makes a dissatisfied face at the answer, but Eliot intercepts any protest she might’ve made by saying, “He’ll come back if he wants to, Parker.”

What Quinn wants to do and what he should do are two very different things, but that doesn’t stop him from caving in a little when Parker shoots him a look that could almost be classified as puppy eyes. 

“If you need me,” he says, even though he really shouldn’t, “you have my number.”

-

It had been sixteen months since London when Quinn sat on Eliot’s couch and said, “It’s about time.”

Eliot stared at him like this wasn’t quite the reaction he’d expected. “Uh.”

“Congratulations,” Quinn added, and he meant it. “Took you three long enough.”

“You’ve been expecting this.” It wasn’t quite a question, but Quinn shrugged and nodded anyway. “Jesus Christ.”

There was a moment of awkward silence, and then Eliot cleared his throat. 

“So, about the two of us,” he started, sounding a little pained, and Quinn decided to have some mercy on him.

“Sounds like you’ve got your hands full with your two troublemakers.” He resisted the urge to make a filthy joke about that, because it wasn’t going to get him invited into Eliot’s bed anymore. “I figure you don’t need an extra complication on top of that.”

The look on Eliot’s face was hard to read, but if Quinn had to guess the primary emotion lingering in those blue eyes, it would have been guilt. “Yeah, this thing,” he gestured between them, “ain’t gonna work anymore.”

Quinn’s mouth quirked up in a wry smile. “Well, I guess this means I don’t have to subject myself to this city’s weather from now on.”

Eliot caught onto the hidden meaning of Quinn’s words easily enough. His smile was hesitant. Reluctant. “Guess that means I don’t have to put up with your whining about what the humidity does to your hair, then.”

_You love my hair_ , Quinn nearly teased back. Instead, he pushed himself off the couch and stood up, picking up his go bag with one hand and shoving the other in the pocket of his suit pants. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to escape this city and go somewhere much warmer.”

Eliot stood and followed him, hovering in the doorway of the apartment as Quinn stepped out into the hallway. There, Quinn turned around to offer Eliot his hand. As if this was the closing of a business deal. 

“We had a good run,” Quinn said, committing every detail to memory as Eliot clasped his hand and shook it. The calluses of his hands, the way his hair curled around the edges of his jaw, the flutter of his eyelashes as Eliot blinked away an unreadable emotion with a crooked smile.

“Parker’s going to miss you.”

Eliot’s teammates had been delighted to learn, nearly a full year ago, that Quinn was sleeping with their hitter. Parker, in particular, had taken a liking to Quinn that had been pleasantly surprising.

He wondered if that would change, now that Eliot was hers. If Hardison would feel the same way.

“Tell her I’m only a phone call away.” He didn’t ask if Eliot would miss him. “And Eliot?”

Their hands were still clasped together, and Quinn savored the warmth of the contact one last time as Eliot looked at him. “Yeah?”

“I’m happy for you,” Quinn said, and let go of Eliot’s hand. 


	2. Chapter 2

He’s in the middle of job in Mumbai when he gets a text message asking him if he’s good at swimming. 

Swimming sounds heavenly right now, especially in this stifling weather. Quinn isn’t wearing a suit at the moment—too conspicuous for the neighborhood he’s camping out in—but his linen shirt alone feels suffocating in the humid heat as he waits for his mark to arrive. 

It’s easier to keep an eye out when you’re talking on the phone instead of trying to look at a screen while texting, so he presses the call button and says, “Depends on your definition of ‘good.’ If you’re asking for me to do the butterfly, you’re out of luck.”

“Freestyle is fine!” Parker says, then pauses. “Could you make a county-level swim team?”

“Probably.” Quinn idly thinks of the last time he went swimming. He’d been vacationing on a small Greek island, enjoying the sunshine and still itching to go to dreary Portland anyway. He’d ended up cutting the vacation short in favor of inviting himself to Eliot’s place, which had turned out to be more relaxing than the beach, much to his consternation. “What exactly do you need me for?”

“We need a swimmer to sell to this swim team coach, but he already knows Eliot from a different con we did last month, and Hardison’s been scared of swimming pools ever since Moreau almost drowned him.” The last words come out in a rapid whisper, like she’s telling him a secret.

Quinn processes all that information for a second. “So you want to sell me?”

“Yep, like how we sold Eliot, back when he was the fiddle.” Well, that’s a story Quinn wants to hear about at some point. “But they don’t get to keep you, because you’re ours.”

That’s not true at all, but Quinn doesn’t think he can contradict her without giving too much of himself away. So he ignores the tightness in his chest, the painful squeeze around his heart, and hums instead.

“I don’t know,” he says, trying to keep his tone as lighthearted as possible. “Can you afford me?”

“Of course we can.” Parker’s honest confidence turns sly when she adds, “We can steal as much as we need for you.”

How is Quinn supposed to resist that? “Give me two days, and I’ll be there.”

-

This con isn’t exactly the kind of job Quinn is used to. Sure, he’s had his fair share of jobs where he had to pose as somebody else to gain access to a mark or a package, but this is the first time everybody else is going to do the work while he simply has to act harmless. 

Well, as harmless as a former Navy SEAL can be.

“Damn, you’re actually really good,” Hardison comments as he looks up from his timer to stare at Quinn from where he’s resting at one end of the empty pool after fifteen laps. The con hinges on Quinn’s ability to swim fast enough to make a regional team coach salivate over him, and the team has four different contingencies in the case that Quinn’s speed isn’t up to those kinds of standards. 

Thankfully, Quinn is pretty damn fast.

“You didn’t actually serve in the Navy, did you?” Hardison asks, narrowing his eyes, and Quinn grins back without answering. 

“He didn’t,” Eliot grumbles from where he’s sitting beside Hardison on the bleachers. He’s the one who suggested that Quinn’s new identity be a former Navy SEAL. “Wrong posture.”

Parker, who was on the other side of the pool and taking photos of Quinn to use for the con, slings the camera strap over her shoulder and walks over. “So we can go with Plan A? No need for Plan E?”

“Plan A is a go, people.” Hardison stands up and heads down to the poolside, Eliot on his heels. “Quinn, dude, you must be starving. Whatcha in the mood for?”

“Honestly?” Quinn heaves himself out of the pool, feeling the pleasant burn in his muscles after the long swimming session. “I’m not picky. I’m too hungry to care what I’m putting in my mouth.”

“You need carbs,” Eliot says in a slightly strained voice. Quinn glances at him and catches Eliot’s gaze lingering on the rivulets of water running down his chest. 

There’s a flicker of heat in the pit of Quinn’s stomach, that familiar magnetic pull urging him to close the distance between them, but then Eliot’s looking at the camera screen that Parker’s shoved in front of him and the moment is gone. It’s just Eliot bracketed by his partners as he looks through the pictures, and Quinn has to swallow a hollow chuckle. 

“Man, come over here and look at these. This looks like it could be on a poster.” Hardison grins wide at Quinn, gesturing at him to come closer, and Quinn doesn’t really have an excuse to say no. 

He joins the three of them and looks over Eliot’s shoulder, which tenses just the slightest bit when Quinn gets too close, and Hardison is right. Parker did a great job making him look like the kind of swimmer a greedy, embezzling bastard of a coach would want. He tells her exactly that and she beams at him. 

He pulls his swim cap off with a wince as his hair sticks to his skin. His curls are more of a nuisance when they’re wet. “Maybe I should get a haircut for this job.”

“But they’re such nice curls!” Parker frowns, looking him up and down. “You’re fine the way you are.”

Quinn runs a hand through his hair. His cover story says he’s been out of the service for over a year now, so technically it would be possible for his hair to have grown this long in the meantime, but it might be easier to sell the con if he looks a little more like a military man. 

On the other hand, he does hate that tedious process of growing his hair out until it’s long enough to tie back again. “Thanks, Parker.”

“I don’t think any of us got a haircut for a con before,” Hardison says, like he’s just realized the fact. “I mean, we’ve definitely had to use wigs and shit, but we’ve never had to consider cutting anybody’s hair. Huh.”

“You and Nate didn’t need it.” Eliot hands the camera back to Parker, who takes it and snaps a shot of Hardison. “And we’ve never run a con where I was the one pretending to be on active duty.”

Parker takes a picture of Eliot this time. “That’s good. We like your hair.”

Quinn likes Eliot’s hair, too. He can’t quite imagine what Eliot would look like with a drastically shorter version of it. Probably still unfairly attractive. “You don’t happen to have any old photos of yourself with a buzz cut, do you?”

“Good luck finding any of those,” Eliot says, raising an eyebrow at Quinn. 

“Oh, come on.” Quinn pauses just long enough for Parker to take a picture of him, then continues, “You’ve already seen me with short hair. It’s only fair.”

Eliot’s gaze flicks to Quinn’s dripping hair, the look in his eyes turning contemplative. “Your hair was curlier back then.”

Parker shoots an affronted look at Eliot. “Wait, you’ve seen Quinn with short hair? When?”

“When we first met,” Eliot says, eyes still on Quinn.

“What, you mean that whole business with Sterling?” Hardison asks, glancing at Eliot then Quinn with a look that says he finds the entire thing morbidly fascinating. “That time you guys broke each other’s ribs?”

Quinn doesn’t think too hard about the fact that Eliot still remembers the little details about that encounter. Any good hitter would remember the appearance of somebody who kicked their ass. Quinn still remembers the details, too. How Eliot’s hair had been tied back. The open collar of his black button-up shirt. The way he’d smiled with bloodied lips, right before he cracked Quinn’s ribs. “Didn’t I give you a concussion, too?”

“Too bad you got knocked out too fast for me to give you one,” Eliot says, smirking. Quinn is torn between smirking right back and scowling because he has no comeback for that.

Hardison shakes his head at them. “Y’all are so messed up.”

“I want to see what Quinn looked like with short hair,” Parker mutters, and Eliot finally looks away from Quinn to give her an odd look.

“Why?”

Parker shrugs. “You said it was even curlier.”

Quinn doesn’t quite see the logic there, but it’s not like Parker’s logic is the same as everybody else’s. “I’m pretty sure I have a couple fake ID photos from when my hair was shorter.”

That makes her perk up. “Oh, I wanna see!”

“Nobody looks good in ID photos, though,” Hardison interjects. “I bet I could find better ones if I do some digging online.”

“Hardison,” Eliot growls. “Don’t.”

The intimidating tone doesn’t work at all. “I’m just sayin’, I bet there are better photos out there of our man. Surveillance photos, y’know. Maybe there was a photoshoot.” Hardison scrutinizes Quinn, up and down. “You don’t have a secret past as a Calvin Klein underwear model, do you?”

“I don’t,” Quinn says, a corner of his mouth hitching up in spite of himself. “But you’re welcome to try and look.”

Eliot shoots Quinn an incredulous frown, which Quinn responds to with a shrug. He appreciates Eliot defending his privacy; Quinn certainly doesn’t want people trying to dig up a past that he’s spent a long time burying. But this is Hardison, who will probably go looking even if the whole world told him not to. Hardison, who belongs to Eliot. That’s enough to soothe what would be Quinn’s usual defensiveness against anybody trying to go digging through his life.

Besides, he’d actually be impressed if Hardison found anything that Quinn didn’t want him to. Some things just can’t be found online. The majority of Quinn’s life, especially the first twenty-six years of it, is one of them.

“Challenge accepted.” The mischievous twinkle in Hardison’s eyes and wide, sunny grin suggest that none of this is going to be a serious effort to dig up any skeletons. His tone is friendly as he continues, “Alright, so before I go fishing on the dark web for any pinup photos of our second favorite hitter here, we gotta decide on lunch. Eliot, you said something about carbs?”

“There’s that burger place three blocks away.” Eliot’s frown fades away as he looks up at his partner, though there’s a lingering hint of tension in the set of his jaw. Quinn wonders if Hardison trying to play digital cat and mouse with Quinn’s history bothers him that much. Wonders who Eliot really wants to protect, here. 

“You guys can decide on the menu; I’m gonna get changed.” Quinn steps back, out of their little bubble, and tells himself that it’s ridiculous to think that the air suddenly feels chillier against his damp skin. “I’ll meet you at the front entrance.”

It only hits him in the showers that Hardison referred to Quinn using the word ‘our,’ twice. It’s not a big deal; the word is a common one, and in terms of Hardison’s speech patterns, it’s something he probably uses regarding plenty of people. Quinn isn’t an anomaly.

But it reminds him of what Parker said. _Because you’re ours_.

Quinn doesn’t belong to anybody but himself. He’s worked hard to earn that and harder to keep it that way. Nobody can claim him as theirs. Not even a team of the best damn thieves he’s ever met. 

But _fuck_ , he wants to hear Eliot say those words anyway. 

-

The thing about Parker and Hardison: they _like_ Quinn.

They had been on vaguely amicable terms with him throughout the dam job, but their interactions had been minimal; everybody’s collective focus had been on the con rather than on socializing. But then months later, the team had discovered that Quinn was sleeping with their hitter when Hardison had gone to Eliot’s apartment, a very concussed Eliot in tow, and discovered Quinn already waiting there. 

Hardison had, for a very hilarious minute, thought Quinn had broken in to murder Eliot. But then Eliot had sighed, complaining about Quinn’s terrible timing, and Quinn had simply shrugged and told Hardison that he’d keep an eye on Eliot for the night. 

The fact that Eliot had simply agreed to Quinn being his mother hen had been enough for Hardison to figure out what was going on. Then the news had rapidly spread to the rest of the team, and Eliot had bitched at Quinn for his shitty timing until Quinn had gotten onto his knees and apologized very thoroughly with his mouth. 

From there, he’d been on pretty good terms with the team. Nate had invited him as an extra set of fists for a con and had shared his whiskey with Quinn afterwards, which seemed like Nate’s version of making friends. Sophie had spent a good half of the con chatting with Quinn about a variety of topics, ranging from fashion to music to favorite animals—probably her version of interrogation—and then told him that he was always welcome at the brewpub. 

And then there had been Hardison clapping him on the back with an excited grin as he welcomed him to the headquarters behind the brewpub the first time, gleefully sharing stories of Eliot from previous cons. There’d been Parker cocking her head at him with a thoughtful gaze until he’d cracked a joke just to make Eliot splutter, at which she’d given Quinn a sharp, delighted smile, the kind that she apparently bestowed on diamonds and expensive paintings that she was about to steal, and had gifted him with a stolen Patek Philippe wristwatch at the end of the con. 

So Quinn had figured he’d won the approval of the whole team—which was surprisingly satisfying, even if he’d never admit that to Eliot—but then Hardison and Parker had gone the extra mile. Hardison had exchanged numbers with Quinn, citing that they might need him again, and since then had been sending him random texts, from useful bits of intel to the occasional **E is very growly and needs to get laid so PLEASE come over**. Parker, on the other hand, had stolen Quinn’s phone and programmed it with her number while he wasn’t looking, and then proceeded to call him every once in a while, sometimes for short, inane chats and sometimes to talk shop with him.

It’d been a surprise, to have those two welcome him so enthusiastically. Even when Nate and Sophie retired from the team and the trio was slowly but surely becoming something more than platonic, Hardison and Parker had been unfailingly eager to have him join them for a con or even simply greet him whenever he came over to spend a couple nights with Eliot. 

And now, it’s pretty evident that the two of them simply like Quinn, regardless of his history and current relationship—or lack of one—with Eliot. Hardison is clearly doing his best to include Quinn in conversations as much as possible, while Parker makes it no secret that she wants Quinn around in their presence at all times. Neither of them are faking their enthusiasm, either. Quinn is good at reading people, and these two aren’t exactly great at lying, anyway. 

By this point, it’s obvious that they aren’t even the slightest bit threatened by Quinn. Which is fair; the bond they share with Eliot is solid, built upon years of teamwork and devotion, whereas Quinn’s relationship with Eliot had mostly consisted of sporadic visits and a lot of sex. There really is no competition, here.

Quinn doesn’t particularly want it to be a competition, either. Because as much as Hardison and Parker like him, he likes them, too. They’re fun, even if they can be ridiculous at times, and Quinn’s always had a soft spot for troublemakers. Eliot said, once, that it was because Quinn was a hell of a troublemaker on his own, and Quinn supposes it’s true. Sure, his brand of trouble is a little bloodier than Hardison and Parker’s, but he has to admit that he shares a love for mischief with the other two thieves that has Eliot constantly sighing into his beer.

So when Hardison digs up a few old surveillance photos of Quinn on the dark web, it doesn’t feel invasive or uncomfortable. When Parker squeals gleefully at the photos of Quinn’s hair, curly and short, it doesn’t feel condescending or unnatural. It simply feels like Hardison and Parker being delightfully weird in the way they like to be towards someone they consider a friend. 

What Eliot makes of his partners being friends with his old friend-with-benefits is a mystery, though. Eliot has always been harder to read than most people, but Quinn can tell that he has mixed feelings about the whole issue. Which, fair enough. Most people would feel that way, in his position.

The exact nature of the feelings clashing in Eliot’s head, though—Quinn has no idea what those are. No clue as to what Eliot’s thinking when Hardison prints out one of the better pictures or when Parker gives one copy to Quinn while keeping another copy for the team. No goddamn hint at all, when Parker shoves the printed photo into Eliot’s face and demands confirmation that Quinn looks good in it.

He doesn’t know anything, but when Eliot grumbles that Quinn looks good in the photo, Quinn feels his heart tumble from his chest to his stomach. When Eliot’s gaze flicks up, meeting Quinn’s eyes, then says, blue eyes soft and voice a gruff mumble, that Quinn looks better the way he is right now, Quinn’s heart crashes all the way down to the ground and cracks open upon impact.

The thing about Eliot Spencer: he likes Quinn.

Quinn just has no fucking idea if that _means_ anything.

-

The con goes pretty damn well. Parker plays the middle-man as Quinn’s agent while Hardison has the fun job of pretending to represent the organization that runs Oregon’s swimming state championships. Eliot, in the meantime, does all the legwork behind the scenes, careful not to be noticed by the mark lest he be recognized and the con gets blown. There _is_ a brief snafu when a real Navy SEAL walks into the mark’s office at one point, but that problem is solved through a mix of Quinn’s improvisational acting skills, Parker’s quick thinking, and Eliot’s creative use of a wet towel. 

“God, the look on his face,” Hardison says in a dreamy voice, like he’s still floating on the high of watching the mark’s face turn gobsmacked when he saw the team and Quinn grinning at him from the bleachers right as he was handcuffed and dragged away. “We should’ve recorded it. Maybe I should do that from now on. Take videos of our marks when they get arrested and find out they’ve been tricked. Make a whole montage. It’d be amazing.”

Parker, sprawled across the couch on the upper floor of the brewpub with her head in Hardison’s lap, makes a contemplative sound. “You have to look them in the eye, though. That’s the good part. It’s not as fun if you’re looking at them through your phone.” 

“Maybe if you had something like a high-definition button camera,” Quinn suggests from where he’s sitting in one of the armchairs perpendicular to the couch. He’s feeling pretty good, much like Hardison, because the mark’s furious incredulity had been incredibly entertaining to watch. “Or those glasses that can double as cameras. Then you could get the satisfaction in the moment _and_ for posterity.”

“You should get on that,” Eliot says from where he’s sitting on the other side of the couch, Parker’s feet in his lap. He’s grinning with that gleam in his eyes that only appears when he’s in a great mood, and Quinn can’t even hate himself for how the inside of his own chest goes warm at the sight, even if the look is directed in Hardison’s direction. “We already have the button cams.”

Hardison raises an eyebrow. “Sure, let me develop a button camera lens fifteen times better than the ones we have right now.” He’s still grinning though, so he’s clearly not put off by the thought. “Y’all think all our tech just falls outta the sky into my hands, don’t you.”

“I thought a stork brought them to you in a little bundle,” Quinn says, and Parker barks a laugh at that.

“Spoiled, the whole lot of you,” Hardison says, shaking his head with a grin he can’t quite hide, one hand running through Parker’s hair and the other stretched across the back of the couch, resting under Eliot’s fingertips. The sheer domesticity of it all makes Quinn’s bones ache something fierce.

He doesn’t belong here.

The thought is unexpectedly, quietly devastating. Like a knife smoothly inserted between the ribs, slicing him open in one clean move.

It’s not the pain that has Quinn straightening up in his seat, though. It’s the alarming idea that he would let himself bleed out here if it meant getting to stay. 

“I should get going,” Quinn says as he stands up, plastering a casual smile onto his face so that his sudden change in demeanor isn’t too obvious. It’s still an abrupt declaration, though, and it’s clear by the faces of the three thieves on the couch that he’s caught them all by surprise. 

“Right now?” Hardison asks, the grin replaced by a look of befuddlement. 

Quinn shrugs. “No time like the present.”

“You’re going already?” Parker sits up, frowning at Quinn. “But we haven’t even gone to the haunted house yet!”

“I’m sure you’ll have fun without me.” The words sting more than he thought they would, but he doesn’t let it show. Instead, he smiles and shoves his hands into his pockets. “Got a job offer this morning that's kinda time sensitive.”

It’s not entirely a lie. The part where he’s taken on a job that has a strict time limit is true. But he’s the one who sought out a job that would take him away from Portland as soon as possible.

“Damn, it’s like you never take a break,” Hardison says.

“I’m pretty sure this job counted as a break to me.” Quinn doesn’t dare let himself dwell on just how much he enjoyed this con. Instead he thinks of what comes next. It’s what he’s good at. Moving forward, even when it hurts like hell. “Besides, I haven’t hit anybody in over a week. I miss it.”

Parker snorts. “Eliot says that too.”

“I can go at least two weeks,” Eliot mutters, which shouldn’t be as endearing as it is. Parker clearly agrees, because she leans over to pat Eliot’s cheek, which earns her a grumpy scowl.

Quinn smothers the pang in his chest with a bright grin. “Wanna bet on that?”

Hardison raises both eyebrows. “Does this mean I have to find a job where Eliot isn’t allowed to hit people?” He and Parker look at each other, then break into slow, evil grins. “Aw, hell yeah. Let’s go the pacifist route, baby.”

Eliot scowls harder. “Dammit, Quinn. Look at what you’ve started.”

“You’re the one who tried to make it into a competition, darlin’,” Quinn drawls, and then hides a wince at the slip-up. 

Eliot stiffens, his eyes going wide as they meet Quinn’s and his jaw clenching hard. It’s nearly impossible to read the emotions in those blue eyes, and Quinn isn’t sure he even wants to read any of it. So he averts his eyes.

Thankfully, Hardison and Parker have either not noticed Quinn’s little slip-up or they’ve dismissed it as a harmless quirk. They’re both still smiling as Quinn turns to nod goodbye to them.

“We’ll keep you updated on how long Eliot holds out!” Hardison yells as Quinn goes down the stairs and out towards the exit of the team headquarters. 

It’s only when Quinn’s halfway through the doorway when he hears footsteps, and he turns to see Eliot behind him. Something nameless and awful tears through Quinn at the sight, the overlap of memories crashing into him. Eliot ready to catch him by the cheek as he turns around, a concussed Eliot at his heels as he complains about Quinn’s shitty timing all the way to the bedroom, Eliot standing on the other side of the doorway and grasping his hand as Quinn said _I’m happy for you_.

“You need something?” Quinn asks, and it’s a fucking miracle his voice doesn’t shake.

“I,” Eliot begins, his gaze dropping from Quinn’s face to his chest before it finds its way back to Quinn’s eyes. He hesitates, like the words are caught in his chest, stuck in his throat, on the tip of his tongue—and then he swallows it all back down. Offers Quinn a weak smile. “Just figured I’d see you off, since the other two don’t have manners.”

_Liar_ , Quinn thinks. It’s a vicious, wounded snarl in his chest, reverberating through his blood, threatening to tear its way out of his throat, and he has to swallow it down like broken glass.

He forces a corner of his mouth to curl upwards. “Tell them not to miss me too much.”

There’s a flicker of emotion in Eliot’s eyes, there and gone in a blink, too fast for Quinn to decipher, but then he’s ducking his head and huffing a soft laugh. “Yeah, well. I’ll pass it along.” He looks back up to meet Quinn’s gaze with a crooked smile. “Don’t get in too much trouble.”

Quinn raises an eyebrow. “How much is too much?”

“Enough for you to wish we’d come over to save your ass,” Eliot says.

“Fair enough,” Quinn says even as he thinks, distantly, that he’d probably never wish that. He’s spent too long working on his own in the dark to ever expect anybody to come save him. Even if he were facing certain death, he doesn’t think he’s optimistic enough to dream of being rescued. He’s never been a big believer in hope.

Hope, in his opinion, is the most ruthless way to break a person. It’s a dangerous thing to harbor in your heart, a foolish thing to act upon. 

But if anybody in this godforsaken world could make Quinn foolish enough to _hope_ , it’d be—

“If you ever need a hand,” Eliot says.

Quinn cuts him off. “I’ll call somebody who isn’t trying to prove how long he can go without punching somebody.”

Eliot rolls his eyes, and Quinn allows himself a moment to feel fondness steal over him at the sight, half-formed words rising from his throat that he tastes on his tongue for the briefest of moments before he chokes it all down. Then he turns and walks away.

-

Nine days later, Hardison texts Quinn to tell him that Eliot gave in and punched out a mugger. Two minutes after that, Parker sends him a photo of Eliot hauling what must be the mugger into a police precinct. Forty minutes after _that_ , Eliot texts him. 

**[If you need a hand, I can punch people again.]**

Something precariously, frighteningly close to hope creeping its way into his heart, Quinn presses his phone to his forehead and laughs until his chest hurts. 


	3. Chapter 3

Three days into Quinn’s vacation in the Maldives, he gets a text message from Hardison asking him if he wants to steal a hotel. Specifically, The Benson. 

Quinn’s interest is immediately piqued.

**[Why do you need me?]**

**[well duh, bc it’ll be fun! also, you’re the only one of us who actually can pull off the whole “i look like i belong in high society” shit without sophie giving instructions]**

Quinn feels a weird tug in his gut at the usage of _us_ in the text, but he ignores it and instead heaves a sigh and looks around him. It’s beautiful here, with beaches full of white sand and a sparking blue ocean spread out for miles. The weather is sunny and bright, warm in a way that has him relaxing into his chair on the beachside terrace of the resort he’s staying at. It’d be a shame to leave this place. And he’s pretty sure the team doesn’t actually _need_ him for this con.

But then Hardison texts him again.

**[E is gonna be a bellboy. it’s gonna be HILARIOUS]**

Quinn pauses and imagines that for a second. Then he texts Hardison back.

**[Give me 24 hrs.]**

-

So, apparently the manager of The Benson is pimping his poor, reluctant housekeeping staff out to his guests, and then using that as blackmail material to extort money from his blindsided patrons. The team’s client is the former deputy housekeeper, who was fired from the job once she caught on to what was happening and tried to put a stop to his little side business.

“He’s definitely underpaying his maids to make them need the extra income,” Hardison says as he taps away at his laptop. “And threatening to fire them if they don’t do what he says, too. Sleazy bastard.”

“How does he know which guests to send the housekeeping staff to?” Quinn drums his fingertips on the table as they look at the information Hardison’s throwing onto the screens. “Is he just randomly sending them into single male guests’ rooms and seeing what happens?”

Parker bites into a prawn cracker and chews on it for a moment before she says, “That’d bring complaints, though, right? If a maid showed up randomly and tried to have sex with you, you’d complain to management.”

“The guests could be the ones asking for the services,” Eliot points out, absent-mindedly pushing one of the bowls of prawn crackers closer to Parker, who takes a cracker and shoves it in front of Hardison’s face so that he can eat it while still typing. “That way he knows who to send the girls to.”

Hardison frowns, swallowing his prawn cracker. “But like, how do the guests know that the services exist in the first place? It’s not like this shit’s gonna be on Yelp or, I dunno, Tripadvisor.”

“Word of mouth,” Quinn says. “That’s how shady information always goes around.” 

“He’s been manager for only a year.” Eliot pushes the other bowl of prawn crackers in front of Quinn, who graciously takes one. “He’s expanded pretty fast just to go by word of mouth.”

Parker hums. “So maybe there’s like, a shady version of Yelp.” She turns to Hardison. “There are websites for that kind of stuff.”

“Yeah, for call girls and hookers, but this is The Benson.” Hardison opens up a new browser window to crawl through the Internet to find such websites. “They can’t put out ads or shit with their name in it. The hotel board would find out and fire the shit out of him. It’d have to be either super secretive, like the dark web, or completely offline.”

“That’s it,” Quinn says, blinking as he thinks through what Parker and Hardison just said. Oh, now that he thinks about it, it’s obvious. “It’s a forced recruiting system.”

Eliot straightens up, understanding dawning in his eyes. “Like the Soviets.”

“Exactly.” Quinn grins at Eliot. “He’s not just extorting for money, he’s also extorting for—”

“Power,” Eliot says with a thoughtful nod. “Probably trying to go up the ladder, too. It would be easy. The Benson has plenty of—”

“—politicians,” Quinn finishes along with Eliot.

They grin at each other for a moment, and then Hardison’s voice says, “Okay, now that was just creepy. I mean, it’s cool as hell, because finishing each other’s sentences is dope, but also: creepy.”

Quinn turns to see Hardison and Parker giving him bemused looks, and he realizes just how easily he’d fallen back into his back and forth with Eliot. He’d forgotten the rush of pleasure in having somebody understand him on an intuitive level, operating on the same wavelength as him. He hadn’t expected that the two of them would still be capable of doing it even now.

He quashes the weak sense of delight in their mutual ability to still be in sync with each other and instead focuses on Hardison and Parker. “So basically, Wilson is blackmailing the guests into bringing him new victims. They’ll go around recommending the hotel’s ‘services’ to their own acquaintances and bring in new guests, who’ll come ask for the girls without realizing they’re about to be ripped off for it.”

“That way, he doesn’t have to do any extra legwork to bring in new victims. It becomes exclusive,” Eliot adds. 

“Like a pyramid scheme?” Hardison asks.

Quinn nods. “Yeah, except this version involves sexual blackmail. He’s probably trying to get his victims to bring in higher profile guests. People with more money or power. Given that a lot of politicians and influential guests stay at The Benson, he’s probably working his way up the ranks already.”

“That’s what we use,” Parker says, her eyes gleaming as she finally puts all the pieces together into her own little labyrinth where the mark will be trapped into. “He wants power; we’ll give him too much of it.”

Quinn watches Eliot and Hardison trade anticipatory grins that carry a fierce kind of pride for their blonde mastermind, feeling a little left out right until both of them turn to grin at Quinn, too. He pretends something warm and tender doesn’t squirm in his chest at that.

“Oh, this is gonna be _fun_ ,” Hardison says, and Quinn is inclined to agree.

-

Parker goes and gets herself hired as one of the new maids first, so she leaves the three of them to prepare for the con while she goes to the hotel for work, giving Eliot and Hardison quick pecks on the mouths and then squeezing Quinn’s arm before she runs off. Tomorrow, Hardison is going to infiltrate the hotel as their new concierge, which means that Eliot and Quinn have to drill him on restaurant and entertainment recommendations, how to gauge guests by their fashion, and the different kinds of spa services available at the Benson. Eliot takes the lead on everything related to food while Quinn is the one generally giving Hardison the pointers on how to tell the politicians apart from the standard upper middle class apart from people who come from old money.

“Oh god,” Hardison says after three hours of listening to them. “There are two of you.”

“No idea what you’re talking about,” Quinn says, hiding a smile behind the rim of his coffee mug.

“How are the two guys who punch people for a living the classiest ones here?” Hardison grumbles. “Quinn might as well be our new Sophie.”

“I just appreciate a certain lifestyle.” Quinn deliberately overlooks the implications in Hardison’s use of _our_ and the two words following that possessive determiner. 

“You know a lot about rich people,” Parker says over the comms, presumably sneaking through the halls of the hotel in her housekeeping outfit. “Like, rich and upper class people. You talk about them like a grifter sometimes.”

Quinn sips his coffee and doesn’t let his smile slip. “A boy’s gotta know who to work for and who to hit if he wants to make real money.”

Hardison looks like he’s about to ask something, and Quinn’s ready to deflect, but then Eliot’s crossing his arms and raising an eyebrow at Hardison. “So, where do you recommend when a couple asks for somewhere nice to have dinner at?”

“Beast or Luce,” Hardison answers. “And, uh, Ox for steak.”

Eliot nods. “If they want Asian food?”

“Uhhhh.” Hardison shoots Quinn a look, which Quinn smirks and shrugs at. “Roe, right? Or Han Oak. And the Thai place.”

“Eem,” Eliot says.

“Who the hell names a restaurant that,” Hardison grumbles, and Quinn takes this opportunity to pull his earbud out and set it on the table to head to the back of HQ, where the bathroom is.

He’d expected Eliot to still be grilling Hardison, but when he opens the door after washing his hands, Eliot’s waiting for him in front of the door. When Quinn gives him a quizzical look, Eliot pulls his earbud out and sighs.

“They think you used to be a socialite,” Eliot says, sounding simultaneously pained and fond of his partners, and Quinn starts snickering at the idea. “That, or you were a bodyguard for a secret billionaire.”

“Bodyguard sounds plausible.” It’s entirely incorrect, of course, but it does sound a lot more realistic than what Quinn really grew up through. 

Eliot gives him an unreadable look, something that almost verges on concerned. “Want me to tell ‘em to knock it off?”

“What, trying to figure out if I’m secretly a trust fund kid?” Quinn shrugs. “Let them have fun.”

Eliot gives Quinn that face he makes when he’s about to tell Quinn to cut the bullshit, and Quinn tilts his head forward and raises an eyebrow, a signal of _I mean what I said_. In return, Eliot flattens his mouth into a tight line and furrows his brows, at which Quinn shakes his head a little, a corner of his mouth hitching upwards.

Eliot sighs. “Fine. But if they start bothering you about it—”

“Stop fussing. I’m not gonna get annoyed at your boyfriend and girlfriend for being curious.” Sure, Hardison tries his patience sometimes, especially when he’s in obnoxious geek mode, but for the most part, Quinn finds himself too charmed by Eliot’s partners to really summon any genuine annoyance against them. “Unless the whole mysterious past is actually bothering them…?”

“We lived without knowing Sophie’s real name for two years. Still don’t really know where she came from. Doesn’t bother us.” Eliot’s eyes flick from Quinn’s face down to his chest, then back up. It’s his tell for whenever he wants something but doesn’t know how to ask for it. “Whatever you don’t wanna share, it’s none of our business.”

Quinn blinks, parsing through Eliot’s words, the sincerity in those blue eyes, the tense line of his shoulders. For all that he and Eliot are often on the same wavelength and that they can still communicate even just through facial expressions and little gestures, for all that Quinn can instinctively recognize when Eliot wants something, he still never can quite tell _what_ Eliot really wants. 

He thinks that maybe Eliot doesn’t quite know what he wants, either.

And isn’t that a pity, because Quinn would give Eliot anything. Everything. All Eliot needs to do is ask.

It’s a dangerous thought. Quinn slams a lid on it and buries it six feet under, where he’s spent so much of his life burying all the things he’s ever loved and wanted and couldn’t keep, and gives Eliot a bland smile. “Thanks, I appreciate it.”

He steps around Eliot, then heads back to the table where Hardison’s pulling up the blueprints for The Benson and projecting them onto the big screens. When Quinn settles into his seat and reaches for his earbud, Hardison holds up a finger. 

“Babe, hold on a sec.” Hardison pulls out his earbud, then gives Quinn a hesitant look. “Hey, man, you got anything lined up after this job?”

Sensing danger—though he has no idea what kind of danger it might be—Quinn immediately lies. “Sort of.”

“Oh.” Hardison’s expression falls a little, which is unfair, because he has such an expressive face. Quinn can read the disappointment and dejection there so clearly that he feels his near-nonexistent conscience prickle a little. “Is it like…because of me and Parker?”

Quinn feels every part of his body tense up. He hopes Hardison doesn’t notice. “I’m not sure what you’re saying, buddy.”

“Like, you never stick around after jobs,” Hardison says, his gaze flitting from his laptop to Quinn to anywhere else, clearly nervous as hell about having this conversation. “Is it ‘cause of us? Or is it ‘cause you don’t wanna be around Eliot anymore?”

Shit, Quinn wasn’t expecting Hardison—or any of the team—to actually confront him about this. He didn’t expect Hardison to care, except he clearly does, if the slightly hurt note in his voice is anything to go by. 

“Look, you guys are not the problem,” Quinn says, and then inwardly groans at how this sounds like a _it’s not you, it’s me_ conversation.

“So there _is_ a problem,” Hardison says, eyes going sharp, and Quinn inwardly curses himself for the slip. 

Quinn pinches the bridge of his nose. “I just—I figured you guys don’t need a third wheel hanging around.” He pauses. “Fourth wheel.”

Hardison visibly brightens. “So it ain’t ‘cause you secretly hate me or Parker.”

“No,” Quinn says in a firm tone.

“And you like Eliot,” Hardison continues.

Quinn doesn’t like how that statement toes a line he’s been studiously avoiding for a long time now. “As a friend, yes.”

Hardison frowns, opens his mouth, then shuts it as his gaze flicks to over Quinn’s shoulder. He shoves his earbud in again. “Parker, what did Wilson say?”

Behind Quinn there are footsteps, and then Eliot’s dropping into the seat beside Hardison. “Did he take the bait?”

Quinn puts his earbud in as well, listening to Parker tell them what she’s found out so far. He watches the way Eliot squeezes Hardison’s hand in an absent-minded gesture, fingertips trailing down his knuckles before Hardison starts typing again to zoom in on specific parts of the hotel’s blueprints. 

_As a friend_ , Quinn reminds himself, and looks away.

-

The problem is that Quinn likes Eliot more than he should.

The problem is that Quinn kept coming to Eliot and eventually forgot what it was like to want to leave. That he got used to waking up to Eliot’s sleep-rough voice saying his name, his mouth warm against Quinn’s skin, his blue eyes soft in the morning sunlight. That he learned to trust Eliot enough with his body and he ended up entrusting the rest of himself, too.

Quinn hadn’t even realized that he was in too deep until he’d been whispering a name he hadn’t spoken out loud for sixteen years into Eliot’s ear. Then he’d realized just what he’d given away: not just a name, but his whole fucking heart on a platter. It would’ve been perhaps less devastating, he thought, to have told Eliot the name of the long-dead child that Quinn used to be. But instead, he had told Eliot the name of the person who’d made Quinn who he was today. The one name that Quinn had treasured more than his own.

He’d hidden the sudden onslaught of panic as best as he could. Had simply acted like it was just one more secret like any other that he’d carefully offered to Eliot. Like this one wasn’t the one that could cripple him. Like this one didn’t mean that somehow Eliot had become the person who knew Quinn better than anybody else.

And Eliot, who had taken every secret Quinn had given him and tucked it away where nobody else would find it, had kissed him like he did each time Quinn willingly gave part of himself to Eliot: like a _thank you_ , like he cherished every part of Quinn that was offered to him, like every shred of Quinn _meant_ something important to him. Quinn had never wanted something as badly as in that moment, sighing into Eliot’s mouth, aching for something he knew he couldn’t have. And yet still desperately wishing that this thing between them mattered to Eliot just as much as it mattered to him.

But in the end, the clock had ticked down and time had run out. Eliot got the happiness and partners he deserved, and Quinn probably got what he deserved, too. It’s not like he ever expected to get what he truly wanted. He knew better than to hope for that.

So Quinn kept going. Pretending that his chest didn’t ache every time Eliot said his name. Acting like a thrill didn’t go down his spine every time his eyes met Eliot’s. Lying to himself that this thing between them never meant anything in the first place. He couldn’t afford to do otherwise, because then he’d have to accept the truth: that his heart was breaking, splintering apart every time he caught a whiff of Eliot’s shampoo or saw the curve of Eliot’s smile or remembered what it felt like to have Eliot’s running his fingers through Quinn’s curls, palm curving around his cheek, thumb brushing against a cheekbone as he laughed against Quinn’s mouth.

Some days, when the inside of Quinn’s ribcage feels particularly tender, like he’s been bruised and beaten, lacerated from the inside-out, he hates himself, just a little. 

(He can’t hate Eliot, no matter how much he tries.)

Most days, though, he tells himself that this is enough. It has to be.

-

The con is running smoothly. Quinn is pretending to be a wealthy and influential guest who has connections that the mark desperately wants to gain access to, and each of the team members are collecting and planting evidence of the mark’s misdoings in preparation for when the mark’s hubris comes crashing down in a karmic avalanche upon him.

“Aren’t you too old to be a bellboy?” Quinn teases, and Eliot scowls at him as he unloads Quinn’s bag and sets it down in the hotel room. 

Hardison was right; this is hilarious. 

“I look like an idiot,” Eliot grumbles, and Hardison snickers softly over the comms from where he’s at the concierge desk. “Should’ve just let me be a security guard.”

“Bellboys have more mobility inside the hotel. Security has to stand in one place all the time.” Parker, in her housekeeping uniform, shoos Eliot out. “Okay, go. I have to make the mark think I’m having sex with Quinn.”

“Remind me why Eliot or Hardison couldn’t have played this role again?” Quinn asks, because it’s ironic that out of the three men who are running this con, it’s the one who _isn’t_ dating Parker that’s playing this part. 

“You grift better than they do,” Parker says easily. She kicks her shoes off and jumps onto the bed, bouncing on it as she says, “Hardison, mute us.”

“Got it,” Hardison says, and then Quinn hears his comms go quiet. 

Parker is still bouncing on her knees a little, but she pats the edge of the bed in a clear invitation, so Quinn goes to sit beside her.

“Hardison says you don’t hate us.” Parker cocks her head at him. “And you don’t hate Eliot, either.”

Quinn stifles a groan. “Parker, I like all three of you. I wouldn’t be coming here to work jobs with you if I didn’t like you.”

“But you never _stay_ ,” Parker says. “Like, not even for an extra day or two.”

“Do you want me to stay?” Quinn asks.

Parker blinks at him in the way she does when whoever she’s talking to is missing what is blindingly obvious to her. “Yeah!”

Quinn feels something ache faintly in his chest as he says, “I don’t know if Eliot wants me to stay, though.”

“What? Why?” Parker leans in close, her eyes darting all over Quinn’s face. He has no idea what she sees, but she pulls away with a frown. “You and Eliot are the same.”

“We both have long hair and kick ass?” Quinn jokes weakly, because he doesn’t like where this is going, but Parker simply shakes her head.

“You think you shouldn’t have good things.” Something deep in Quinn’s gut twists at her words. “Like you think you’re not allowed to have the things you want.” She pokes him in the arm. “Stop thinking that. We’re thieves. We’re supposed to take things even if we’re not allowed.” She pokes him again. “And stop thinking you’re not allowed to want things.”

He leans away from her incessant poking. “I don’t think that.”

She gives him an unimpressed look, but doesn’t call him out on his bluff and instead says, “He wants you to stay.”

Quinn’s throat feels too tight when he says, “Did he actually say that out loud?”

Parker bites her lip, which is answer enough. Quinn sighs and rubs a hand over his face, looking at the painting on the wall. “Parker, listen. I’m—oh, damn.”

“Huh?” Parker follows his gaze, looking puzzled.

“Painting frame, right upper corner,” Quinn says, standing up to move closer for inspection. “It’s a camera.”

Parker frowns and stands beside him. “But we scanned for bugs already.”

“This one’s not a transmitter. It only records.” Quinn starts taking the painting down. “He’d have to come collect it later after the guest checks out. This stuff was developed by European intelligence agencies ages ago.”

“How do you know all this?” Parker asks, sounding intrigued as he observes the camera lens more carefully, checking the back to see where the memory card would be. “Were you a spy?”

“Not me,” Quinn says easily. He’s tempted to say something more. To share a part of himself with her. Just one little secret. But he can’t bear to share any more of himself when he’s already given all of himself away to somebody else, so he swallows the temptation down.

Just for a second, he wishes Eliot were here instead of Parker, because Eliot would understand. Because Eliot would ask, _she taught you about this?_ And Quinn could say yes.

Because Eliot is the one person who knows Quinn better than anybody else.

-

The problem, really, is that Quinn discovered that every single inch of him belonged to Eliot Spencer, and Eliot had no intention of keeping him.

-

The con goes beautifully well. They manage to get Wilson to bite off more than he can chew, calling down an actual Senator’s rage upon him, causing the rest of his blackmail victims to turn on him as well. The housekeeping staff cheer when Wilson is led out in handcuffs.

“That went well,” Eliot says cheerfully, tossing his bellboy cap away as he climbs into the van. Hardison is still giving his statement to the police, while Parker’s been surrounded by a gaggle of housekeeping staff who are celebrating Wilson’s arrest. Eliot grins at the sight. “Can’t wait to see them find out that they’re all getting a hell of a raise.”

Quinn feels a corner of his mouth tick up at the thought. That’s the fun of working with this team, he thinks. All the jobs leave a distinctly sweet aftertaste in his mouth. 

But then he remembers the conversations he’s had with Hardison and Parker. He thinks about how he’s going to face them when he tries to leave again, and the taste on his tongue turns bittersweet. 

“Hey, you okay?” Eliot asks, a hint of a frown on his face. “You’ve been a little off the past few days.”

“It’s nothing,” Quinn says, but the exhaustion comes through his voice, and he feels something deep in his chest crumble a little at the way Eliot’s eyes go soft and concerned, the way he rarely shows in front of other people.

“Is it ‘cause of your mom?” Eliot asks in a hushed voice. “This job must've reminded you of her.”

Quinn hates the way his breath catches in his chest. “That’s not—it’s fine.” There’s something terrifying about how badly he wants to fall apart in front of Eliot whenever he remembers that Eliot _knows_ him like nobody else does. He hurriedly quashes the feeling and changes the topic. “Your partners want me to stick around.”

“They like you,” Eliot says, a corner of his mouth hitching upwards.

“I guess so.” Quinn looks out the van window to see Parker start to detach herself from the group of housekeeping staff. “Guess that’s why they keep inviting me on jobs even when you don’t really need me.”

Eliot’s smile fades a little as he looks out the window to stare at Parker, then Hardison. “They’ve been inviting you a lot more recently.”

“You did tell them not to miss me too much, right?” Quinn jokes, but Eliot’s frowning now, his brow furrowing as if he’s realizing something he doesn’t quite like. “Eliot?”

“Did Parker give you a weird pep talk?” Eliot asks.

Quinn blinks. He wonders if that conversation from two days ago counts as a pep talk. “I guess?”

Eliot swears under his breath, and Quinn sits up straighter, wondering what the hell he’s missing and about to question Eliot about it, when Parker and Hardison choose that exact moment to open the van doors and slide into their seats. 

The ride to the brewpub is noisy, with Hardison doing most of the talking and Parker and Quinn chiming in. Eliot adds some commentary, too, but he isn’t saying much. 

When they arrive at the headquarters, Quinn goes to pack his things in the guest room while Eliot drags his partners off to the main bedroom. By the time Quinn’s done packing and has his go bag ready, Eliot’s striding out of the bedroom with a subdued Parker and Hardison trailing after him.

“Everything okay?” Quinn asks, watching the way Parker’s mouth twists in dissatisfaction and Hardison just looks pained. 

“It’s fine.” Eliot takes a look at Quinn’s go bag and presses his lips in a flat line. “Going already?”

Quinn forces a smile. “You know how I am.”

“Yeah,” Eliot says, sounding a little rueful. “I know.”

“You could stay,” Parker blurts, and Eliot turns and gives her a look that Quinn can’t quite catch from this angle. She purses her lips together, then adds sulkily, “If you want.”

Quinn shrugs with one shoulder and gives her a small, apologetic smile. “Maybe another time.”

Parker and Hardison send him matching looks of disappointment at that, but they bid him farewell anyway as he walks downstairs, Eliot following him out.

“Sorry if they were bothering you,” Eliot says when they’re at the doorway.

Quinn frowns. “They weren’t bothering me.”

“Well, they sure were bothering _me_ ,” Eliot grumbles, which makes no sense at all, but Quinn is tired of trying to parse through Eliot’s words and read him. He’s tired of looking for things that he can’t have. 

“It’s nice that they want me to stick around,” Quinn says, because it’s true. It’s nice to just be liked. It’s nice to be wanted. 

Eliot’s jaw clenches, like he’s about to say something. His eyes dart from Quinn’s eyes, down to his chest, then back up. He hesitates, then unclenches his jaw. “They’ll miss you.”

Quinn wonders if Eliot ever misses him. If Eliot will ever tell him what he really wants.

“Well, I’m only a text message away.” Quinn hefts the strap of his go bag over his shoulder and quirks a small smile at Eliot. “Now go take care of your troublemakers.”

Eliot nods, not saying anything else, and Quinn turns and goes through the door.

Just as he starts walking away, Eliot says his name, and Quinn turns, and fuck, he hates this, they need to stop doing this in goddamn doorways because it feels like the worst kind of deja vu, expecting Eliot’s hand to catch his cheek and pull him in. And seeing Eliot with his eyes wide, desperate, his words trapped behind his teeth as he clutches the open door handle and looking at Quinn like he _wants_ so badly—

_Ask me_ , Quinn thinks wildly, breathlessly, desperately. _Ask me to stay for dinner. To stick around for a week. To never leave. Ask me for something, anything. I’m your goddamn Huckleberry. Don’t you know I’d do anything for you if you just fucking_ asked.

Eliot’s voice is hoarse when he says, “I can’t take care of you from here, so don’t make too much trouble.”

Quinn’s chest squeezes so tight that his heart is pushed up to his throat, and it takes him two tries to swallow it down so that he can breathe. He smiles shakily. “I’ll keep that under consideration.”

Then he turns back and walks away, caught between laughing and crying, his heart breaking with every step he takes. He breathes through the pain and keeps moving forward.

This is enough. 

It has to be.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: work tags have been altered because of violence in this chapter. Content warnings for moderately graphic violence and torture.

Quinn is in the middle of a job in San Francisco when he runs into Eliot. As in, Eliot actually slams into him in a tackle as Quinn turns a corner and takes him down. Quinn’s instinctive reaction is to throw a punch, but he recognizes the scent of oak and spices and he freezes.

“What the fuck?” Quinn asks, and Eliot blinks, as if he just realized who he tackled right now.

“Quinn?” Eliot frowns. “The hell are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing.” He hears footsteps, and turns his head to see Parker and Hardison running into view. “What are you guys doing here? This isn’t even Oregon.”

“Quinn!” Parker says, sounding delighted to see him, which is nice but still explains absolutely nothing.

Hardion waves. “Hey, man. Good to see you.”

Quinn shoots them a bewildered look, then realizes that Eliot is still straddling him and feels heat flush through him at the close contact and familiar weight. He immediately shoves Eliot’s shoulder. “Get off, you’re heavy.”

Grumbling under his breath, Eliot gets off of him and offers his hand to Quinn, who takes it so that he can be pulled up into a standing position. “We’re here because our mark gets her stuff shipped from here, and we think she’s smuggling artifacts.”

“She’s an interior decorator,” Parker adds.

Eliot crosses his arms, looking Quinn up and down. “What’re _you_ doing here?”

“I’m here because,” Quinn says, realizing that this means he’s going to have to work with the team _again_ , “somebody’s smuggling artifacts through a shipping company here and I have to retrieve one of them.”

“Oh my god,” Hardison says, grinning wide, “we’re teaming up. This is _wild_.”

“Good, we can use another hitter,” Parker says, her eyes lighting up with an unholy glee. “It’ll be faster if we split up.”

Not that Quinn wouldn’t appreciate a few more hands on deck—the job will end faster if there are more eyes to find what he’s here for—but this is just, well. A hell of a weird coincidence. 

“So what are you looking for?” Eliot asks, and Quinn takes out his phone to show the team a picture of the jade figurine he needs to retrieve. 

In return, the team explains what they’re here for: all the records from the shipping company’s main office and the artifacts themselves, just to get the mark in trouble with her clients when she has no products to offer. 

“Hardison and Eliot can go to the office for the records,” Parker says. “Quinn and I can go through their shipments and steal the artifacts.”

It sounds like a good plan, so they all nod at each other and split up. Eliot and Hardison disappear towards wherever the main office of the place is, and Parker picks the lock to the warehouse that Quinn had been originally intending to get into. She works a lot faster than Quinn does, of course, which is helpful. He appreciates whatever weird coincidence that brought the team here, even if there’s something quietly nagging at his brain about just how _specific_ this coincidence is.

“Who’s running this place?” Quinn asks as he and Parker start checking the boxes for illegally smuggled artifacts. He’d done some digging and nothing particularly alarming had popped up, but it’d be good to know if the team has any extra intel. Hardison’s research would be better than Quinn’s. “Are they simply transport or are they the suppliers, too?”

“Big family business,” Hardison says over the comms. “Most of the family seems clean, but Lionel, the second son, seems to be doing shadier deals on the side by adding illegal cargo. He’s the one working with our mark.”

Quinn’s intel had pretty much indicated the same thing, though he hadn’t really gleaned the specifics about who in the family business was in charge of these dealings. 

“Problem is the security,” Eliot adds. His voice goes hushed as he and Hardison presumably break into the office. “There’s usually some form of security involved at the holding points of a smuggling operation. We couldn’t find records on any extra security measures aside from legit ones, though.”

That’s what Quinn had discovered, too. “Maybe they never considered it? This isn’t a professional operation.”

“It’s possible,” Eliot admits.

“Ohhh.” Parker cracks a box open and squeals in delight. Quinn looks inside and sees what’s clearly a 16th century Holbein dagger nestled in packing peanuts. “I’m taking you.”

Parker plucks the dagger and shoves it into her backpack, then moves on. They find more artifacts as they make their way through the boxes, including the one that Quinn came for. He allows Parker to tuck the figurine away into the backpack for safekeeping as well, and then they’ve eventually gone through every available box. Over the comms, Hardison reports that they’re done and on their way back to the van.

“Shall we call it a day, then?” Quinn asks, glancing at Parker. She’s nodding at him with a mischievous grin when they both hear the creak of a door opening and the sound of low voices. Quinn immediately reaches a hand under his jacket to grab his gun, as he and Parker quickly hide themselves behind a shelf. Quinn listens intently to the voices of at least three different men, and curses under his breath. “Romanians. Your boy Lionel has Romanians in his pocket.”

“Shit, we’ll be there in a sec,” Eliot says, but Quinn is counting the voices and he knows for sure that they’re outnumbered. Which is normally not a huge deal, but Romanians usually have guns. A lot of them. And Parker is right here. 

“No, listen,” Quinn says, then he hears raised voices. Fuck, they must’ve discovered that the artifacts are missing. That means they’re on high alert, potentially with itchy trigger fingers, and while Quinn’s fought his way through worse, he can’t risk Parker getting caught in the crossfire. “We don’t want them seeing the van and chasing you down. We gotta get out without letting them know how to find us. Stay where you are; we’ll go out the back exit and make our way up to you.”

The back exit is close enough; he and Parker reach it without getting noticed. But the problem is the long, narrow alleyway that winds its way around the warehouse back to the open street. There’s no cover at all. If any of the men take a look out back, they’ll find Quinn and Parker for sure.

Which means it’s time to run as fast as possible, before they’re found. 

“Go, go!” Quinn hisses, and he follows Parker as they break into a sprint. Seconds later, he hears yelling as they’re discovered, but there’s still at least two-hundred feet until they’re out the alleyway, which gives the men too much opportunity to start shooting. 

Quinn makes a decision as they run the first corner.

“Parker,” he says. “Keep running.”

Parker turns to him, her eyes going wide, her steps faltering. “Quinn?”

They can’t waste time. “Parker, if you get caught, we’re screwed, okay? Keep running.”

“Quinn,” Eliot’s voice breaks in over the comms, sounding alarmed.

“No,” Parker says, but she’s smart, she’s good, and she’s going to do what Quinn asks, because she knows how to make the hard choices that nobody else should be making. 

Quinn hates that he’s forcing her to make this choice, but he’d hate himself more if anything happened to her. So he pulls his dirtiest trick and says, “Parker, _please_.”

She looks at him for just one more second with something like heartbreak in her eyes, then turns and runs.

Quinn turns around and waits, then knocks out the first guy to come around the corner. He can hear Eliot in his ear, telling him that he’s coming right now, and Quinn would tell him to not bother, but he’s a little breathless from holding back a dozen Romanians barreling around the corner and into him. 

He holds them off for a good amount of time, disarming their guns and shooting some of them in the kneecaps. Unfortunately, he wasn’t counting on the knives, and he hisses when he feels a serrated blade go through his stomach. The pain unbalances him, just enough for one of the men to slam into him with a taser, electrocuting him, and then everything goes black.

-

When Quinn regains consciousness, he’s in what looks like a condemned building and he’s been tied, pretty thoroughly, to a metal chair. He feels a throbbing pain in his abdomen that makes him inadvertently hiss, and then he hears Hardison’s voice in his ear. “Quinn? Buddy? Are you alive? Are you okay?”

Comms. Quinn still has his earbud. “Shit, where am I?”

“They took you to San Mateo,” Eliot says. “We had an issue because your earbud shorted out when you got tased, but the tracking is working again, so we’re comin’ for you.” His voice is firm and rock solid, an unfailing promise in his words as he says, “We’re gonna get you out.”

Quinn’s about to answer that when he hears footsteps. He turns his head to see a tall, lean man with a balding head and a scar down his lip walking in. Quinn takes a moment to note the hammer in the guy’s hand and groans. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

“What’s going on?” Hardison asks.

“You,” Scar Lip says, “took something that belongs to us.”

Quinn straightens in his seat a little, then immediately regrets it because he can feel the blood spill from his stab wound at the movement, and he has to grit his teeth to stop himself from making a pained sound. “Yeah, well, technically it doesn’t belong to you, right? It’s stolen goods.”

A smile curls along the man’s lips, like he thinks Quinn is amusing. That’s not a great sign. “Your friend who got away—you tell us where that friend went, and maybe we don’t kill you.”

“Not a big fan of _maybe_ ,” Quinn says. “And you won’t need to kill me.” He can already tell he’s losing blood way too fast. How long was he knocked out? “At this rate, I’ll die from blood loss in less than an hour.”

Over the comms, he hears both Hardison and Eliot swear. He doesn’t hear Parker’s voice, but she must be there, too. She got away. That’s what matters.

“Then we’ll make as much as we can of the hour,” Scar Lip says as he drops into the empty chair across from Quinn, and Quinn inwardly resigns himself to an excruciating amount of pain. And probably death. It’s highly possible that the team won’t make it before he dies from shock or blood loss. And honestly, were they really going to take on an entire crew of Romanians on their turf? Just the three of them? It was a stupid idea. Better to cut losses and run. 

It wasn’t like Quinn was theirs to save, anyway.

“Why not sell out your friend?” Scar Lip asks, amicable. “She left you behind.”

“She did the smart thing,” Quinn says. He rotates his wrists from where they’re tied behind him. He can’t get out of the ropes and he can’t break the chair, but the chair isn’t bolted to the floor. He could still move. Still fight. Probably wouldn’t last long, but he’d rather die fighting than just taking whatever this guy is about to dish out. 

Scar Lip laughs. “And you, what about you? Are you doing the smart thing?”

“I’m a lost cause,” Quinn says, and he’s saying it just as much for this guy as he is for the team. This is his way of telling them to give him up. “Might as well die with my conscience clean.”

“Quinn, don’t be stupid,” Eliot says over the comms, and Quinn ignores his words and simply enjoys the cadence of his voice. If he’s going to die, it might as well be with Eliot’s voice in his ear. At least, this way, he won’t be completely alone. “We’re coming. Just hang in there.”

Quinn’s never been a big believer in hope.

But if anybody in this godforsaken world could make Quinn foolish enough…

“Well, we’ll see if you change your mind,” Scar Lip says, and then without warning, he brings the hammer down on Quinn’s knee.

Quinn doesn’t quite scream; he keeps a wounded, animalistic noise trapped behind his teeth, but the shock of hurt radiates through his whole body as he doubles over as far as the ropes will allow him, the stab wound’s throbbing pain distant in the face of the immediate, crack of agony. In his ear, he distantly hears Eliot and Hardison calling his name.

“Are you paying attention?” Scar Lip says, and Quinn takes a moment to wrestle the hurt under control before he answers.

“Good move.” Quinn bares his teeth in a snarling grin. “Fracturing my kneecap so that I can’t run, huh?”

In his ear, he can hear Eliot swear in a murderous, low tone. Amidst the pain and lightheadedness, Quinn feels a burst of fondness for him. 

Scar Lip is talking, but Quinn’s focus starts slipping. It’s a bad sign. He’s losing blood faster than he bargained for, and the added strain on his body probably isn’t helping. He thinks Scar Lip is listing different body parts that he can break, but it’s hard to follow his words when Quinn’s on the verge of passing out.

“Hmm, somebody needs a wakeup call,” Scar Lip says, and Quinn doesn’t quite follow what he means until the weight of metal presses against his collarbone on the left side. It takes him a moment to realize that Scar Lip’s settling the hammer there, and he feels just a frisson of fear before Scar Lip raises the hammer.

When the hammer lands with a sickening crunch, Quinn can’t quite hold back the scream that rips out of his throat.

“Oh god,” Hardison says in his ear, sounding horrified and on the verge of hysterics. “Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ —”

“Breathe, Quinn,” Eliot’s voice comes through, calm and unwavering. “You’re going to make it. We’re almost there. Just breathe.”

Quinn focuses on his breathing, hanging onto Eliot’s every word even as his focus goes in and out, the pain shorting out his higher functioning. He thinks he hears Scar Lip laughing, but he’s barely holding on, just listening to Eliot’s voice. Even then, he starts losing the ability to process what Eliot’s saying. Eventually, all he hears is, “Hang on, sweetheart.”

And then the line goes dead.

Looks like Quinn’s going to die alone, after all. 

“You’ve lost too much blood,” Scar Lip says, sounding disappointed. “I didn’t expect you to talk anyway, but I was hoping we’d have some more fun.” He sighs. “Time to finish up, then.”

Quinn feels the weight of metal press the top of his skull. He closes his eyes and thinks of Eliot’s last words to him. _Hang on, sweetheart._

At least he got to hear Eliot call him that one last time, he muses, just as Scar Lip raises the hammer.

Then he hears gunfire outside.

Scar Lip swears under his breath in Romanian, then moves away towards the door to check what’s going on. Quinn—head pounding, stomach stinging, collarbone and kneecap throbbing—looks at him go and thinks that there’s no way this is happening.

He’s never been a big believer in hope. He’d learned when he was thirteen and declared legally dead that he was never going to have the luxury of anybody coming to save him, that he was alone. Quinn, no family name. Nobody to have his back except a woman who wouldn’t even let him call her his mother.

But if anybody in this godforsaken world could make Quinn foolish enough to hope, it’d be Eliot fucking Spencer, who just slammed into the room and cracked Scar Lip across the face hard enough to send him flying five feet away.

“Quinn,” Eliot says, rushing towards him to cup his cheek, just as Hardison and Parker follow him into the room, and they’re idiots for walking in here. Idiots, all three of them. 

And somehow, Quinn had ended up hoping they’d come for him, anyway, so he’s the biggest idiot of all.

“Hi there, darlin’,” Quinn rasps, tilting his face into the warmth of Eliot’s palm. 

Then he passes out.

-

He’s barely conscious when he hears voices. Steady beeping. The sound of medical alerts going off from far away. 

Hospital, his brain recognizes. It recognizes the voices nearby as familiar, but can’t quite place which voice belongs to who. Can’t follow what the conversation means. 

“I told you guys to stop meddling.” That voice. Quinn likes that voice. It makes him feel safe. Lets him relax into the bed he’s laying in.

“We weren’t—”

“Look me in the eye, Hardison, and tell me that you guys didn’t deliberately plan a job where we’d have to run into him.”

“We, uh.”

“We just want you to be happy.” A voice Quinn has been missing all this time finally speaks up. “We want both of you to be happy.”

“I _am_ happy. I’m happy with you guys.”

“Yeah, man, we get it. We’re happy with you, too. But you can be happier, y’know?”

“We know it won’t mean that you like us any less.”

“Parker. Hardison. We’re not doing this, okay? Just—leave it. Alright?”

Quinn doesn’t quite hear the rest, but something in his chest hurts, just a little, at the way his favorite voice in the world goes quiet and pained with those last words.

-

When Quinn wakes up in a hospital bed—properly, this time—he finds Eliot and Hardison at his bedside, quietly talking to each other until they notice that Quinn’s eyes are open. 

“Quinn,” Eliot says in a soft voice, immediately standing up and leaning over him. “We’re in the county hospital. You remember what happened?”

“Romanians,” Quinn says, his voice rasping from how dry his throat is. “Hammer to my knee and collarbone.”

“Stab wound to your abdomen,” Eliot adds.

Hardison hovers nervously. “You don’t hurt or nothin’, right? You need more painkillers or anything?”

“I’m good,” Quinn murmurs. He twists a little and sees blonde hair outside in the hallway. “Can I talk to Parker?”

Eliot and Hardison hesitate, but then they nod and go out, gesturing at the hospital room as they talk to Parker. She comes in soon enough, looking small and hesitant, and Quinn motions for her to come closer.

“It’s my fault,” Parker blurts as soon as she’s standing at Quinn’s bedside, her hands clutching the rail of the bed. “We didn’t do background checks more thoroughly because we just wanted to make this job work and we had to hurry before you left, and I shouldn’t have left you behind, and I’m _sorry_.”

She looks terribly young like this, her eyes shining with unshed tears, her shoulders tensed, her whole body curled in on itself, and Quinn hates it. Parker should never have to look like this, all miserable and scared and upset.

“Hey,” he says, hesitating before he settles one hand on the rail, next to Parker’s. He’s not sure if he should touch her right now. “You did the right thing. Leaving me behind was the right choice.”

Parker shakes her head. “But I _shouldn’t_ have.”

“If you’d stayed, things would have been much worse. Parker, look at me.” When Parker meets his eyes, he tells her, “You did exactly what I needed you to do. It’s okay, alright?”

Parker looks at him for a long moment, then she nods slowly, one hand shifting down until it cover’s Quinn’s. When she squeezes his hand, Quinn smiles at her, and that’s all it takes for a tear to slide down her cheek as she exhales shakily. Then, she smiles back.

-

Quinn gets discharged from the hospital the next day, and the team circles him anxiously as he hobbles into the van—thankfully his right knee wasn’t as damaged badly as they thought and surgery went well, so it’s in a splint rather than a full cast—with his left arm in a sling to take the weight off his shattered collarbone. Eliot, in particular, hovers like a mother hen that just hatched a chick with a stab wound and broken bones. As soon as Quinn’s stuff is situated in the guest room above the brewpub, Eliot forbids him from walking around unless it’s absolutely necessary, and also keeps fetching him things, like tissue boxes or extra pillows or random books. 

“Tell him to stop,” Quinn says to Hardison, who shakes his head from where he’s sitting on the couch next to Quinn, tapping at his laptop while he shreds apart the mark’s business—apparently the team took care of their little con while Quinn was in the hospital—and frames the Romanians from San Francisco for all kinds of crimes that’ll have the police swarming after them.

“Hell nah, he’d just ignore me.” Hardison peers at Quinn’s knee. “You need to rest, anyway.”

Quinn wants to say something along the lines of how it’s not a big deal, but he knows Hardison took it hard when he had to listen to Quinn’s interactions with Scar Lip, so he sighs instead. “Fine.”

He allows it for four days. Eliot keeps cooking increasingly lavish meals, all of it consisting of Quinn’s favorite foods, and Hardison and Parker spend most of their free time sitting with Quinn and talking to him, even coaxing him into a game of Jenga, which Parker never loses at. 

It’s nice, barring the whole injury thing. Nice to just spend time helping Parker pick jobs or debating with Hardison about intel gathering methods or just watching Eliot hover around the thin line between staying right by Quinn’s side and staying away from Quinn. It takes four days of watching that before Quinn finally decides enough is enough. He’s sorted through his hazy memories from the hospital enough to make his own conclusions, now.

“Parker and Hardison,” Quinn says after they finish lunch. “I wanna talk to you two.”

The two thieves exchange looks that are befitting for two troublemakers who got caught in the act of making mischief. Eliot, clearly caught between amused and worried, doesn’t say a word and does the dishes while Quinn hobbles to the guest room with his crutch, Parker and Hardison trailing after him.

Once the three of them are safely ensconced away in the guest room, Quinn sitting on the edge of the bed while Parker and Hardison sit across from him on the chairs they placed there for the duration of Quinn’s recovery, Quinn sighs and says, “Did you two take this interior decorator job to crash _my_ job on purpose?”

Things are very quiet for a moment, but then Hardison says, “Yeah.”

Parker nods. “We did.”

Quinn resists the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. He doesn't bother asking them how they knew which job he'd taken; he knows the answer will inevitably be Hardison. He knows the answer to the next question as well, but asks it anyway. “Did you guys keep inviting me on jobs lately so that I’d spend more time with Eliot?”

Parker and Hardison exchange guilty looks, and this time Quinn does pinch the bridge of his nose and groan. 

“Parker. Hardison.” He looks at them and hates how everything makes sense in hindsight. “Are you trying to con me into dating your boyfriend?”

“Well,” Hardison says, dragging the word out as he looks up at the ceiling. “It wasn’t exactly a con.”

“Encouragement,” Parker says. “It was encouragement.”

Quinn sighs. “Guys, you can’t do that.”

“Why not?” Parker asks. Hardison hisses her name, but she keeps going. “You like him. He likes you!”

Quinn’s jaw clenches at her words. His chest aches at the very thought of Eliot liking him in any significant way. “He doesn’t—the way he likes me isn’t the same way he likes you guys.”

“I don’t know, man,” Hardison says, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “He’s been pretty miserable without you.”

“He has you two,” Quinn says, and he feels that familiar feeling inside his ribcage, feeling like he’s bruised and wounded, as if he was kicked while he was down. That sense of hating himself for his own weakness, for how badly he _wants_ something he can’t have. “He doesn’t need me.”

Parker throws up her hands. “This is the same conversation that we’ve been having with him!” She grabs Hardison by the wrist and marches for the door. “That’s it. We’re going to do this. Hardison, plan M!”

“Oh god, we’re gonna die,” Hardison says, and follows Parker out the door, leaving Quinn bewildered and incredulous.

He’s trying to figure out what the hell he’s supposed to do now when Eliot gets shoved into the room, the door clicking shut behind him. Quinn watches, wide-eyed, as Eliot scowls and shouts, “I’m not giving either of you any food for a _week_ , you hear me?”

Quinn clears his throat, and Eliot whirls around looking a little embarrassed and incredibly chagrined. Quinn asks slowly, “So…you knew they were up to this?”

Eliot’s whole body tenses up, clearly on the verge of pretending that he has no idea what Quinn’s talking about, but then his shoulders sag and he groans. “I figured it out after the Benson job.”

“Let me guess,” Quinn says dryly, “you told ‘em to knock it off on asking me over for jobs, so instead they decided to crash my job so we’d hang out in a roundabout way?”

Eliot shrugs, looking exhausted. “Pretty much.”

Quinn swallows. He’s been trying so hard to maintain the right amount of distance between them. He’s been trying to give Eliot whatever it is that he wants, but the truth is, he has no fucking idea what any of this means. He’s tired of guessing. Of waiting. So he asks, “What about you, what do you want?”

“Why does everybody keep asking that,” Eliot mutters, rubbing his face with one hand and then running it back through his hair, looking a little hunted. 

“Eliot,” Quinn says, his voice breaking a little on the name, and Eliot freezes, his eyes on Quinn. “Do you want me?”

For a long moment, Eliot doesn’t answer. Then, his gaze drops down to Quinn’s chest, then comes back up, and Quinn waits for Eliot to lie.

Except, Eliot says, “I can’t do this.”

Quinn forgets to breathe.

Eliot continues, “Hardison and Parker are too important to me. It wouldn’t be fair.”

Right. Well. It’s not like Quinn hoped otherwise or anything. He ignores the dull ache in his ribcage. “Yeah, I mean, it wouldn’t be fair to them—”

“No,” Eliot says, interrupting Quinn. He moves towards Quinn, just two steps, then stops, like he’s realized what he’s doing and knows he shouldn’t cross this line. “No, it wouldn’t be fair to _you_.”

Quinn blinks up at him, his entire body going a little numb. “What?”

“I, fuck, Quinn.” Eliot snaps his mouth shut, his gaze skittering away from Quinn as he rubs a hand over the bottom of his face, clearly trying to find the right words. It takes him a while, but Quinn waits him out until blue eyes meet his. “Hardison and Parker…they’re my priority, y’know? They’re the most important people in my life. If you and I were to start something, you’d be in second place all the damn time.” He looks at Quinn like his goddamn heart is breaking. “I can’t do that to you.”

Quinn feels—fuck, he doesn’t know what he feels right now. He just feels overwhelmed with want and delight and grief, a whole mixed bag of emotions crashing into each other as he looks at Eliot and feels his whole goddamn heart fall apart from how it can’t contain the feelings inside of it. “What if I said that I don’t care?”

Eliot stares at him. “What?”

“What if I don’t need to be your priority?” Quinn carefully keeps his hands still and doesn’t fidget. “What if I’m okay with being in second place?”

“Quinn,” Eliot says, his voice wavering. 

“Not everything has to be a goddamn competition,” Quinn tells him, his ruined heart in his throat, his chest an aching empty cavity. “Eliot, I don’t _care_.”

Eliot steps closer, right until he’s standing in front of Quinn. His hand cups Quinn’s cheek, tilting his face up so that he can look into Quinn’s eyes. “You’d take what you can get,” Eliot realizes. “You’d just take whatever I gave you.”

Quinn doesn’t answer that, because he still has his pride, even if he doesn’t have anything else left. All of him belongs to Eliot, but he can at least try to keep this.

“Jesus, Quinn.” Eliot looks gutted, his other hand coming up to cup Quinn’s other cheek. One thumb stroking down his cheekbone in a gesture so familiar that Quinn feels something inside of him break a little. “You deserve better than that.”

“You’re not the one who gets to decide what I deserve or what I want.” Quinn doesn’t say, _I want you however I can get you_. Doesn’t say, _I don’t deserve you but I want you anyway_. Instead, he says, “The only decision you get to make is if you want to do this. So, what do you want?”

Eliot hesitates, then says, “I…fuck.” He exhales, shuddery and slow, then leans down to press his forehead against Quinn’s, closing his eyes. “I wanna do right by you.”

And Quinn gets it, he does. It’s just how Eliot is: stubborn and infuriating and fiercely protective of the things he cares about. And somehow, Eliot cares about Quinn, to the point where he won’t let himself _have_ Quinn unless he can treat him right. Quinn understands, even if he doesn’t like it.

“Guess you’re gonna have to figure out how to do that,” Quinn says.

Eliot sighs. “Yeah.”

“And until you figure it out,” Quinn says, even though it hurts to say it, “I’m not gonna come back.”

Eliot’s breath stutters out of him, but he doesn’t let go of Quinn. Not yet. “Okay.”

“Okay.” Quinn closes his eyes. Just for a moment. Just until Eliot lets go.

-

Quinn leaves the next day, even though Parker and Hardison protest against it. Eliot doesn’t look very happy about it either, but he’s the reason Quinn needs to put some space between them, so he keeps his mouth shut. 

He says his goodbyes to Hardison and Parker first, and then per usual, has Eliot walk him to the door of HQ. Quinn has a sneaking suspicion that the reason Hardison and Parker never come downstairs with them is to give him and Eliot some privacy for their goodbyes.

“Make sure you get a doctor to look at your knee and collarbone when you go back,” Eliot says, because his mother hen instincts will apparently continue even when their relationship is in a weird, unexplored no man’s land. “If Hardison digs for your medical records and it doesn’t show you went to the hospital, we’re sending Parker after you.”

“You’re ruthless,” Quinn deadpans as he hefts his go bag carefully over his right shoulder. “Absolutely brutal.”

Eliot rolls his eyes. “Take care of yourself, okay?”

“I always do.” Quinn rests a hand on the door handle, then quirks a smile at Eliot. “Don’t miss me too much.”

He’s expecting Eliot to deflect, or to bring up how much his partners will miss Quinn, or for Eliot to simply say that he won’t. What he isn’t expecting is for a hesitant, helpless smile to bloom on Eliot’s face as he asks, far too sincerely, “How much is too much?”

God, it’s unfair for him to ask that, looking so devastatingly handsome, his blue eyes soft with an emotion he usually only reserves for his partners, smiling at Quinn like he wants to keep him. It’s so fucking unfair, and Quinn can’t be held liable for his reaction to that.

He hauls Eliot in by the front of his shirt with one hand and kisses him, desperate and hard, like he’s been starving for it. Pouring every single fucking ounce of how much he _misses_ Eliot every day into the kiss. And Eliot kisses him back just as desperately, his hands coming up to frame Quinn’s face as he tilts his head to better fit their mouths together.

Eventually, Quinn breaks away, exhaling shakily against Eliot’s mouth as he says, “This much.”

Then he pushes Eliot back. Takes one last moment to look at dazed blue eyes and soft brown hair, because this just might be the last time.

And then Quinn opens the door and leaves.


	5. Chapter 5

Quinn is in the middle of a job when he gets the call. He’s on a bus heading towards Nairobi, transporting fragile merchandise that happens to be worth a huge paycheck, and he’s expecting to finish the job up in a day or two, barring any complications. So he’s thinking about what to do on his vacation to distract himself from the hollow ache in his chest when he feels his phone vibrating in his pocket.

When he checks the caller ID, he feels a frisson of disappointment at the fact that it’s not the person he’s been hoping for.

Maybe he shouldn’t be hoping at all. It’s already been ten weeks.

Shaking his head to dispel the mixed feelings climbing up his throat, Quinn answers the call. “Speaking.”

“Quinn,” Parker’s voice rings out, and it isn’t happy or excited or even sulky. He instinctively straightens up in his seat. “Eliot got shot.”

For one horrifying second, Quinn’s brain goes blank with terror and his lungs freeze, but then he quickly pulls himself back together. Parker said _shot_ , not _dead_. This doesn’t sound like a worst case scenario. “Is he okay?”

“He’s in surgery,” Parker says. There’s a forced kind of calm in her words as she recites the facts. “He lost a lot of blood and he passed out. But the paramedics said it didn’t look like he was hit anywhere important, so they think he should be okay.”

Quinn processes that for a moment. “Are you and Hardison okay?”

“Yeah, we’re—” Parker’s voice breaks. “We’re okay.”

Alright, so Eliot is in the hospital, not in immediate danger, and the team is safe for now. Quinn lets out a silent breath and focuses on gathering information. “Who shot him?”

“Albanian mafia,” Hardison’s voice says, sounding scratchy as hell. “At least, that’s what Eliot says they were.”

Quinn momentarily forgets the gravity of the situation in the face of the sheer incredulity that overtakes him. “Why are you three getting mixed up with the _Albanian mafia_? Are you trying to get yourselves killed?”

“For the record, we had no idea they’d branched out into hooking grad students up with drugs.” Hardison sighs. “We were just there to check out this professor who was sexually harassing his students and shit, you know? We didn’t sign up for this.”

“Grad students?” Quinn makes the connection easily enough. “Adderall?”

“It’s a hell of a gateway drug if you’ve sold your soul to academia,” Hardison confirms.

Parker’s voice, steadier than it was a minute ago, says, “So the Albanians are supplying drugs to the students through the professor’s teaching assistant. We wanna take down all of them.”

“Professor, assistant,” Quinn ticks them off, “and the Albanians, too?”

“They shot Eliot,” Parker says, which is fair enough. It’s a very compelling argument.

“But we can’t do it by the two of us,” Hardison says, trailing off meaningfully, and Quinn sighs. “I mean, we ain’t trying to force you back or nothin’; we know Eliot’s still getting his shit together. But honestly? It’d just be nice to have you around, man.”

“We miss you,” Parker says, because she says the most terrifying things as easily as diving off the top of a skyscraper.

He’s not strong enough to say no to this. “I’ll be there in sixty hours, tops.”

-

When Quinn arrives at the brewpub two days later, Eliot is laid up on the couch upstairs, looking tired but otherwise good in a soft, rumpled sweatshirt that Quinn knows from firsthand experience is one of the most comfortable articles of clothing Eliot happens to own. The tension deep in Quinn’s gut relaxes at the sight of Eliot healthy and safe, and then something treacherously tender blooms in his chest when Eliot turns to meet his eyes.

“You’re, uh,” Eliot says in a halting voice. “Here.” 

“I’m here.” Quinn shrugs, feeling the awkwardness settle in the air around them. “Bullied your way out of the hospital early, I see.”

Parker straightens up from where she’s been curled up by Eliot’s side and frowns at Quinn. “Where’s your stuff?”

Quinn makes his way to the armchair next to her, carefully ignoring the way Eliot’s gaze tracks over him as he moves. “In my hotel room.”

She frowns harder. “You’re not staying with us?”

“It’s easier that way,” he says, meeting Eliot’s eyes. Eliot flushes a little and looks away, which further confirms that Quinn really did make the right choice by getting a separate hotel room. 

Hardison, who was the one that let Quinn inside two minutes ago, drops into the empty space next to Eliot’s right side and says, “Damn, it’s awkward in here.”

“Hardison,” Eliot grits out through his teeth, and Quinn laughs, the tension dissolving as easily as that. It’s easy to realize that as awkward as things may be between him and Eliot right now, having Hardison and Parker as buffers helps smooth things out enormously. Honestly, Quinn feels damn lucky to have both of them here. Him and Eliot would be downright hopeless without them.

Feeling a little more secure in being here, Quinn narrows his eyes at Eliot. “So where exactly did you get shot?”

Eliot rolls his eyes and pulls the neck of his sweatshirt down to reveal bandages covering the right side of his chest. Parker helpfully points at a specific point under the bandages, and Quinn can’t help but raise an eyebrow.

“You’re lucky that didn’t go through your lung.” He’d known that Eliot had been hit in the chest, yes, but seeing how close the bullet must’ve strayed to Eliot’s vital organs sends a cold chill down Quinn’s spine. He doesn’t let that show, though. Instead, he says in a sweet tone, “So am I allowed to shoot the guys who did this to you?”

“Yes,” Parker and Hardison say simultaneously.

“No,” Eliot says.

The three thieves trade affronted looks amongst each other for a minute.

Hardison says, “I mean, if they used guns first…”

“They shot you,” Parker says in an insistent and sulky tone.

Eliot sighs. Turns to Quinn with an air of resignation that has Quinn hiding an amused smile. “No killing.”

Quinn smirks. “I can work with that.”

-

They spend three days preparing for the con, which Parker had to reconstruct to accommodate for the fact that now Quinn is the only one who hasn’t been burned by the Albanians, meaning that he’s the only one who can interact with the teaching assistant. Parker and Hardison can still deal with the professor, since that part of the con hasn’t been blown at all, so Quinn and Parker divide the work between them, figuring out which of them can perform which roles, hashing out backup plans for backup plans for backup plans. 

Hardison interjects every once in a while, but he mostly focuses on creating Quinn a brand new identity as a representative of the regional accreditor for the university, who is here to audit several classes for quality, including the classes their two primary marks teach. 

“No, that won’t work,” Quinn says when Hardison adds a master’s degree from the University of Oregon to Quinn’s CV. “It’s too close by, and we don’t want me to feel too familiar. Go for a private university, somewhere in Washington.”

“But private school makes you feel too snobby,” Hardison argues. “How are you gonna get Torres to open up to you about her drug-dealing habits when you’re getting all Ivy League on her?”

Quinn rolls his eyes. “Hardison, rich kids in private schools are more likely to be able to afford coke and heroin than kids in public schools. Trust me, it’s easier to go from that angle.”

“I still think both of the marks won’t bite if you’re unapproachable,” Hardison grouses, but he capitulates and starts editing Quinn’s CV to fit Quinn’s specifications. 

“Oh, it’s not about being approachable,” Quinn says. “It’s about giving them the opportunity to show off. Nichols wants to prove he’s better than others, and Torres wants somebody to impress. You give them an authority figure who has great credentials but only mediocre competence, it’s easy bait.”

“Oooh, I like that.” Parker scoots around the corner of the table and looks at his screen for a moment. “Hardison should pressure Nichols with the report, and I’ll threaten him with going public.”

“Make sure to undermine his masculinity when you’re doing that,” Quinn tells her. “Predators hate it when that happens. They get irrational.”

Parker smiles, exuberant and a little unhinged. “Do you have any recommendations on how to do that?”

“On how to undermine a guy’s masculinity?” Quinn grins wide. “Girl, I have a whole list.”

Hardison glances between them. “You two are scaring me. Stop that.”

Quinn starts snickering at the look on Hardison’s face while Parker reaches up and pats Hardison soothingly on the head. 

“I’m surrounded by terrifying people,” Hardison mutters, and Quinn turns in his seat to ask Eliot to add his two cents that will reinforce Hardison’s mild fear when he catches the look on Eliot’s face. 

Eliot’s sprawled across the couch, dozing on and off while the three of them discuss the con, but for now he’s awake and watching them work with such strong emotion that Quinn’s throat closes up. The soft affection and sheer wonder on his face as he looks at Quinn and Parker and Hardison working together is overwhelming to see, and Quinn has to swallow down a nameless, aching desire down before he finds the strength to grin at Eliot, who doesn’t seem to have realized how much his face is giving away.

“Eliot, how would you metaphorically kick a guy in the balls?” Quinn asks, pretending his heart rate hasn’t doubled in the past five seconds.

Clearly catching onto what Quinn’s trying to do, Eliot grins, wide and wicked in a way that makes a burst of fondness unfold in Quinn’s gut. “I’d probably say that I see why nobody wants to sleep with him.”

“Y’all are gonna give a guy permanent low self-esteem,” Hardison comments, shaking his head. “I mean, this guy deserves it, but _damn_. You might as well literally kick him in the balls.”

“I’m saving that one for the Albanians,” Quinn says in a voice as sweet as sugar and a smirk as sharp as a blade, at which Parker and Hardison give him identical, savage grins. When Quinn glances at the couch, Eliot is smiling at him with such open fondness that Quinn feels the inside of his chest go warm. 

It’s the closest he’s ever felt to being right at home.

-

The con is going perfectly, right until it’s not. 

As in, everything is going great, right up to the point where Nichols sexually harasses Torres, who decides to send the Albanians after him using false information, which the Albanians figure out soon enough and decide to kill Torres for trying to use them for her own means. And thus, Quinn has to intervene to save the lives of the primary marks from their secondary marks.

“You know, I get it. I definitely think a guy who sexually harasses people he has authority over deserves to get the shit beaten out of him,” Quinn tells a terrified Gabriella Torres as she paces the walk-in freezer they woke up in after being knocked out. He rubs his hands together and listens to Parker in his ear, telling him to stay in character. “But I kinda think this might’ve been overkill.”

Howard Nichols, shivering in his short-sleeved button-up shirt and cargo pants, mutters something about how he didn’t do anything to deserve this, and Torres rounds on him with a shriek about how he was the one who was harassing students at every chance he got, and how she’d had to pretend it wasn’t happening because the school board never gave a damn about the victims since he had tenure. Nichols, in return, tells her that ordering a hit on him for that was excessive, not to mention that she had no moral high ground to stand on considering that she was dealing hard drugs to students on campus. He adds that he never would’ve bothered harassing her if he’d known she was associated with the mafia, and Torres screams at him that he shouldn’t harass anybody, regardless of their association with organized crime.

“I gotta admit,” Quinn tells the both of them once they’re all screamed out and shivering in the cold, “both of you have some excellent points. I’m sure you could discuss it in more detail with the police when we get out of here.”

“If we don’t get killed first,” Torres mutters darkly.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Quinn says, and the freezer door unlocks. “They’re not here.”

Nicholes squints at him. “How would you know that?”

“Because this is the dining hall freezer,” Quinn points out. He goes towards the door and opens it. “We’re still on campus.”

Nichols and Torres hesitantly follow him out to find themselves in the kitchen of the biggest dining hall on the university campus. When Torres and Nichols wander past Quinn and out of the kitchens, they find a good chunk of the student body and staff staring at them, with the police in the very back. Apparently the mic Hardison hooked up in the freezer beforehand picked up every word of the conversation and broadcasted it very well across the building, because everybody in the dining hall looks scandalized, entertained, or furious. 

“But, the Albanians,” Torres says, faltering. Nichols looks just as flabbergasted. Neither of them seem to have realized that Parker and Hardison are the ones who locked them into the freezer in the first place. 

The police start advancing, and Quinn quietly slips out via the air vents, where Parker is waiting for him.

“Primary marks taken care of,” he says. “Secondary marks?”

She looks up at him, a sharp kind of glee in her eyes. “They’re exactly where we want them to be.”

“Good.” He grins, baring his teeth. “Let’s go take care of them.”

-

The thing about the Albanian mafia: they’re dangerous. 

The thing about Quinn: he’s much more dangerous than they are.

It’s really a matter of knowing who he’s dealing with and being prepared to deal with them. Sure, Quinn’s a little handicapped because of the no kill rule, but that just makes things more interesting. Besides, it’s much more fun to terrify grown men and leave them in bloody heaps for the police to collect later. Killing can be a little dull.

“Right,” Quinn says, reloading his Beretta and stepping over a whimpering Albanian to crouch down and look the ringleader in the eye. This is the one who shot Eliot, according to Hardison and Parker. He’d love to take his sweet time teaching this man a very important lesson about how shooting Eliot Spencer is not fucking allowed, but the police will be here soon enough, so he has to make this fast. “Let’s make this quick, pal.”

“Who the hell are you,” the man hisses through his bloodied teeth. Quinn’s mildly impressed; it’s not easy to maintain coherency and an attitude when both your kneecaps have been shot out, but this guy is clearly made of stronger stuff then his henchmen, who are whimpering into the ground. 

Quinn smiles, cold and humorless. “I’m the man who isn’t going to kill you.”

This man is lucky. He’s lucky to have surprised Eliot and get in a shot; Eliot could’ve taken care of a dozen Albanians easily, if he’d known they were coming and was prepared for it. He’s very lucky that his bullet didn’t cause Eliot any significant harm. He’s lucky, because this means Quinn is not going to kill him messily and painfully. 

Instead, he breaks three of the guy’s fingers, two ribs, collarbone, and nose. 

“If I ever see your face again,” Quinn says calmly as he hears the sound of sirens approaching, “I’m not going to let you off this easily.”

He’s tempted to shoot the guy in the chest, right side, a little above the lungs. The exact same place Eliot’s going to have a scar. But adding a gunshot wound in such a precarious spot on top of all the inflicted damage could lead to the guy dying from shock or blood loss, and Eliot wouldn’t approve of that, so Quinn shelves the urge and leaves the guy groaning in pain on the ground.

“Thank you,” Eliot’s voice says over the comms as Quinn walks towards the back exit.

“Any time you want me to kick ass on your injured behalf,” Quinn says jokingly, but Eliot cuts him off.

“Not just for that.” His voice almost sounds proud, which does something weird to the insides of Quinn’s stomach. “But for not killing anybody.”

It’s a strange paradox, to have somebody you’d kill for and refrain from killing for at the same time. And somehow, Eliot understands that for Quinn, the latter will always be harder than the former. 

“The things I do for you,” Quinn says with a faux-weary sigh. 

Eliot chuckles at that. Warmth flushes through Quinn at the sound. “So I was thinking that I should thank you.”

“Oh?” Quinn sneaks out the exit and down the back alley, taking the long way around to the main street so that he doesn’t run into any cops. “How?”

“Hardison got us reservations at Luce for dinner tomorrow,” Eliot says.

“Italian sounds good.” Quinn walks out of the alley and into the bustling main street. “Why tomorrow, though? I thought we were celebrating the end of the con tonight?”

“Oh, we are,” Eliot assures him, and Quinn realizes that Hardison and Parker are conspicuously missing from this conversation. “But the reservations tomorrow night are just for the two of us.”

Quinn stops walking, feet frozen to the pavement. 

“I think it’s about time we had a talk,” Eliot continues, and for once he doesn’t sound pained or nervous or guilty. “And you’re not allowed to skip town until it’s over.”

“That’s a terrifying way to ask somebody on a date,” Quinn jokes weakly, half-expecting Eliot to deny it.

Instead, Eliot just huffs. “Fine.” His voice goes warm and sweet, like honey on Quinn’s tongue. “Quinn, will you go have dinner with me tomorrow night?”

Fuck, Quinn’s spine might’ve melted a little. “Well, since you asked so nicely.”

“Good.” Eliot’s smile bleeds into his voice. “Now get back here. The steaks are gonna be done soon.”

“You’re not supposed to be cooking yet!” Quinn hisses, finally walking forward again.

“It’s been nine days,” Eliot grumbles. “I’m fine.”

“If Parker starts poking your bullet wound to check if you’re really okay, I’m not stopping her,” Quinn says disapprovingly, but he smiles all the way back to the brewpub.

-

It’s only when he ends up sitting across from Eliot in a strategically, romantically lit restaurant that Quinn starts to get a little nervous. 

Yesterday had been easy and fun, with Hardison and Parker to keep things from getting serious or awkward as the four of them celebrated the successful end to yet another job. When Quinn had bid the three thieves a good night and returned to his hotel room, he’d been tired enough to not overthink things and had fallen asleep well enough. Then today, he’d been mostly relaxed, even as he was making sure he looked his very best and making his way to Luce a good half an hour early. He’d found Eliot waiting there, blue eyes going dark with appreciation as they took in the sight of Quinn in his charcoal suit and pinstripe tie. The midnight blue shirt was almost identical to the one he’d worn at their first encounter, which Eliot seemed to recognize with a faint smile.

Eliot looked great, too. He was in a red dress shirt and black sports jacket with matching black slacks that made him look sharper than usual, even without a necktie. Quinn had felt his throat go dry at the open collar of Eliot’s shirt, and had been so distracted by the line of Eliot’s shoulders in his jacket and Eliot’s appreciative gaze that he’d forgotten that the whole point of this dinner was a conversation.

And now he’s trying to figure out what the hell is going on, because there’s a pessimistic part of him that’s convinced that this is the final supper. The last farewell dinner, before Eliot finally cuts Quinn loose. 

But the pessimism, for once, is drowned out by hope. Because Eliot is looking relaxed and happy as he orders from the menu for the both of them, his gaze warm as he looks at Quinn again, and Quinn dares to think that maybe this is the beginning of something.

“I’m gonna be honest,” Eliot says once their wine is poured and they’re not about to be distracted by the waitstaff, “I’m gonna be real bad at this talking thing.”

Quinn actually smiles at that. “I’m shocked, Eliot. I never imagined you anything less than entirely eloquent when it comes to your feelings.”

“Fuck off.” There’s no bite to the words; Eliot’s grinning. “But seriously, if what I say doesn’t make any sense, tell me to shut the fuck up and get to the point.”

Oh, this sounds incredibly entertaining. “Okay, now I want to hear every single bit of nonsense you have to say.”

Eliot rolls his eyes, but he starts talking. “So, I talked with Parker and Hardison, and they’re a hundred percent on board with all of this, by the way.”

Quinn expected nothing less from those two, but he still feels a quiet sense of warmth at the words. “Alright.”

“So, uh.” Eliot’s fingertips nervously drum against the table. “You know how I told you last time, about Parker and Hardison being the most important to me?” 

Smile fading as the mood shifts towards something serious, Quinn nods.

“They’re still the most important to me. I can’t change that.” Eliot takes a deep breath. “But I’ve been thinking that…you can be just as important, too.”

Quinn goes very, very still.

“I know the thing I have with Parker and Hardison ain’t the same as what I have with you,” Eliot says slowly, like he’s trying his damned best to give Quinn every shard of truth he has. Like he thinks Quinn deserves every jagged piece of Eliot’s honesty. This, Quinn realizes, is Eliot trying to do right by him. “But just because it’s different doesn’t mean one of you is better. You told me that it doesn’t have to be a competition, and you’re right. It ain’t. All three of you are equally important to me. Just in different ways.”

“Okay,” Quinn says, because he doesn’t know what else to say.

Eliot narrows his eyes, like he can tell that Quinn is having trouble believing that this is really happening. “I wasn’t sure about it back when Parker and Hardison tried to convince me to make things work with you, ‘cause I thought that I couldn’t do it. I thought—it’s just impossible, right? To not prioritize someone.” He swallows. “I was so sure I’d fuck it up, if I tried to keep all of you.” He gives Quinn a crooked, regretful smile. “Fucked it up anyway, didn’t I.”

“You didn’t,” Quinn says quietly.

“I made you leave,” Eliot says. “Made you think that you didn’t matter to me.”

Quinn averts his eyes and picks up his wine glass, suddenly desperate to find something to hide behind. “You didn’t make me do anything. I offered to go, remember? And I didn’t act like you mattered to me, either.”

“You’re not the one who decided to end things with someone they cared about just because they got someone else.” Eliot’s fingers tap the wooden table restlessly. “Quinn, what we had going on—it meant something to me. You mean something to me.” 

Shit. _Shit_. Quinn isn’t equipped to deal with this. His chest feels too tight, too full. “I—fuck.” He takes a quick sip of his wine to hide how wrecked his voice is. “I don’t blame you for any of it.”

Eliot nearly says something, but then their food is here, so he keeps his mouth shut until the waitstaff are gone. Quinn gets a head start on his linguini just so that he can have something to occupy his hands and mouth, and then Eliot’s sighing as he stabs at his rigatoni. “We suck at this talking thing.”

“ _You_ suck at it,” Quinn corrects after swallowing a mouthful of frankly amazing pasta. “I’m just meeting you at your level.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.” Eliot sounds a little amused, the earlier guilt bleeding away, which is good. Quinn doesn’t want Eliot to blame himself for any of the mistakes they’ve both made. “But yeah, I just keep thinking I’ll fuck it up.” His voice goes a little quieter. “I always fuck up the good things in my life.”

“You are _not_ going to fuck this up,” Quinn snaps, putting his cutlery down to frown at Eliot. “Hardison and Parker love you way too much to let your mistakes or your stubborn ass ruin anything. There’s no way you’ll ever lose them.”

Eliot’s eyes flick up to meet Quinn’s. “What about you?”

Quinn is not ready to even remotely discuss his feelings for Eliot, but it wouldn’t be fair to not give anything in return to all the honesty Eliot’s painstakingly showing him today, so he grits out, “Eliot, do you know who the most important person in my life used to be?”

For a few seconds, Eliot doesn’t say anything. Then: “Your mom.”

“Yeah, and the last time I saw her was seventeen years ago.” Quinn swallows. Takes the plunge. “I’ve only ever told one person in my entire life about her.”

Eliot stares at him.

It takes every ounce of Quinn’s courage to look Eliot in the eye as he asks, “Wanna guess who the most important person in my life is now?”

“Shit,” Eliot says, sounding a little strangled. “I—damn.” He lets go of his fork and rubs a hand over his face, which is flushing a dark red that probably matches the hot blush Quinn can feel on his own cheeks. “Just, give me a sec.”

It takes Eliot a good two minutes before he lowers his hand. There’s still a hint of red on his cheeks, but he looks more determined than embarrassed or overwhelmed. 

“You’re the most important person in my life, too,” Eliot says, and Quinn’s heart stumbles in his chest. “You. Hardison. Parker. I didn’t know if I could make it work, if we could all make it work, but this past week proved that it works. All of us. We work together.”

“Eliot,” Quinn says, because he can’t take any more of this, “shut the fuck up and get to the point.”

“I want you,” Eliot says immediately. “I want to make things work between us, and not with you as second place.”

Quinn breathes, letting the words take root in his chest. Lets himself believe in them. Lets himself believe that he can have this. Have Eliot.

“Okay,” he says, and his voice might shake a little. “Yeah, I want that, too.”

Eliot smiles at him, and Quinn is helpless but to smile back.

Now that the hard part is over, their conversation turns to meaningless, small things as they eat their food and drink their wine. At some point during dessert, Eliot’s ankle slides up the side of Quinn’s shin, and Quinn’s whole body goes hot at the contact.

When they pay the bill and step outside into the cool evening air, there’s a short silence. 

And then Eliot asks, “You mind if I go back to your hotel with you?”

“Only if I get to see how Hardison and Parker react to you telling them that I’m your boyfriend now.” Quinn pauses. “Wait, is that what we’re calling ourselves? Boyfriends?”

Eliot rolls his eyes as he takes out his phone. “Yeah, dumbass. We’re boyfriends now.”

Quinn might be smiling uncontrollably. He’s so doomed. “Just checking.”

Eliot types and sends a text message, then snorts and shows Quinn the replies.

**[He said yes. Going to his place for tonight.]**

**[HELL YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHH]**

**[Tell him he’s supposed to stay with us from now on! No more hotels! Except for today, since we still need to clean the guest room. Have fun!]**

Quinn soon feels his own phone vibrate in his pocket, and he checks it to see text messages from Hardison and Parker, mostly consisting of smiley faces and exclamation points. He feels a burst of fondness for both of them, and he replies that he’ll see them tomorrow.

Putting his phone back in his pocket and turning to see Eliot, mouthwateringly handsome in his sharp outfit and eyeing Quinn like he wants to devour him alive, Quinn decides that he can stop thinking about Hardison and Parker for the rest of the night. For now, Eliot’s the one person he needs to think about.

-

The hotel Quinn is staying at is a bland, tidy place a few blocks away from the brewpub. There’s nothing special about his room, but it does have a marvelously comfortable queen-sized bed, and Quinn can’t help but feel a frisson of anticipation at putting it to good use. Eliot’s been cracking jokes about the job they did at The Benson and how the place compares to here, and in return, Quinn’s been making sly jokes about how he should’ve been allowed to have fake sex with the bellboy instead of the maid. Their banter is lighthearted and familiar ground, but there’s an undeniable pull between them, magnetic and charged. 

As soon as Quinn opens the door to his hotel room, Eliot pushes him inside, kicking the door shut behind them as he yanks Quinn around, one hand reaching out to pull him in by the cheek for a heated kiss. Eliot doesn’t waste any time and licks into Quinn’s mouth urgently, and Quinn is all too eager to part his lips and sigh into Eliot’s mouth, welcoming the warm, slick slide of Eliot’s tongue against his own. 

They kiss like they’re drowning and the only oxygen they can find is in each other. The hand cupping Quinn’s cheek slides around to the back of his head so that Eliot’s fingers can thread through his curls, and Eliot’s other arm hooks around Quinn’s waist and pulls him closer, pressing their chests together. Quinn settles both of his hands on Eliot’s waist and holds him there as he grinds their hips against each other, and the friction sends a crackle of pleasure up his spine. Eliot must feel just as aroused by the contact, because he groans into the kiss and Quinn swallows the sound down.

When they finally break apart, Eliot exhales slowly against Quinn’s mouth. Quinn can barely make out his smile in the dim light shining through the windows as Eliot says, “Come to bed with me.”

Fuck, Quinn hasn’t heard those words in a long time. They send a shiver down his spine, just like the first time Eliot ever said them.

In response, he kisses Eliot, slow and wet, backing him up until the backs of Eliot’s knees hit the bed. He runs his hands from Eliot’s hips up his sides over his chest, sliding them under the sports jacket to smoothly shove it off Eliot’s shoulders. In the meantime, Eliot’s hands tug Quinn’s tie loose, falling away for a moment to let the jacket fall to the bed but immediately returning to then go for the buttons of Quinn’s shirt.

They undress each other like that, chasing each other’s mouths as they trade kisses while their hands move in a familiar dance, unbuttoning each other’s shirts, pulling belts open, smoothing palms over bare skin.

Quinn pauses and pulls away at the soft noise Eliot makes when Quinn’s hand brushes against recently scarred flesh. The bullet wound is healing nicely; the stitches were taken out just two days ago, and the skin there is still red and shiny, but Quinn knows from experience that this one is clean, as far as bullet wound scars go. Eliot shouldn’t be feeling any pain from the injury any more, but he’s meant to be cautious and not put unnecessary strain on it for a while.

“You’re supposed to be taking it easy,” Quinn murmurs, brushing a kiss against Eliot’s cheek.

“You sayin’ you’re gonna go easy on me?” Eliot asks, sounding amused by the very idea, because they’re both aware that Quinn’s impatience and preference for hard, rough fucks don’t quite align with going easy in bed. Eliot’s the one who likes to draw things out and enjoy lazy sex, and he’s driven Quinn out of his mind countless times by taking things slow. 

Quinn nips at Eliot’s lower lip. “I’m saying that I’ll do all the work today.”

“And what, all I have to do is lay back and take it?” Eliot asks in a teasing tone, but there’s an unspoken challenge there, and Quinn’s never been the type to back down from something like that.

“Yeah.” He slides a hand into Eliot’s open fly and cups his half-hard cock over the fabric of his underwear. “All you gotta do is spread your legs for me, darlin’.” 

He squeezes Eliot’s cock, and Eliot groans, dropping his forehead onto Quinn’s shoulder as his hands clench at Quinn’s open shirt. Quinn takes a moment to enjoy rubbing Eliot’s cock a little, his mouth watering at the thought of getting his mouth on it tonight. He loves the thickness of it on his tongue, and loves it even more inside of him. 

But tonight, Quinn’s going to make Eliot come undone, nice and easy.

“On your back,” Quinn says, squeezing Eliot’s cock one more time before pulling his hand away. Eliot nods, and then Quinn takes a step back so they both have enough space to strip off their remaining articles of clothing. 

As Eliot pulls the covers down and climbs onto the bed, Quinn deposits the small bottle of lube and pack of condoms they bought during the walk here on the mattress and flips the bedside table lamp on. He wants to see Eliot properly tonight. Wants to take in every inch of him that Quinn thought he’d never be able to have again.

Eliot gives Quinn a soft smile when he settles between Eliot’s spread knees and leans in to hover over him. “Hey there.”

“Hi,” Quinn says, smiling back, and dips down to kiss Eliot for a slow, indulgent moment. Then he pulls away, littering kisses down Eliot’s jaw and neck as he goes, making sure to kiss the bullet wound on the way down. He feels Eliot card a hand through his hair, pulling the hairband off so that his curls fall into his face. Moving further down, he scrapes his teeth down a nipple to feel the way Eliot arches into the contact. Finally, he presses a lingering, open-mouthed kiss to Eliot’s sternum, then sits back onto his heels so he can pop the cap of the lube open.

When Quinn presses a lube-slick fingertip to Eliot’s entrance and traces the rim there, Eliot tenses up, then relaxes with a deliberate exhale. Quinn rewards him for that with a kiss to the inside of Eliot’s knee, then starts pushing a finger inside.

Quinn’s fingered Eliot open plenty of times before; he’s even fucked Eliot with just his fingers until Eliot came with his cock untouched. But something about tonight is different. Part of it is because Quinn’s rarely ever gentle about prepping Eliot—he saves that for the occasions where Eliot’s been particularly banged up—but mostly, it’s because this isn’t just for fun. This isn’t just a fuck where Quinn desperately wants to keep something he can’t have. This is _his_. 

He gets to keep this. Because Eliot is going to keep him. Because somehow, Eliot’s decided Quinn is one of the most important people in his life, and this is something more than just a fuck between friends. 

“Jesus _Christ_ ,” Eliot swears aloud when Quinn pushes in a second finger and immediately presses his fingertips to where Eliot is the most sensitive. Quinn grins at the way Eliot tips his head back with a hiss, his knees instinctively squeezing Quinn’s sides. 

“Almost there,” Quinn says, twisting his fingers inside Eliot just so see him arch his back with a cut-off moan. He feels his own dick twitch at the sight of Eliot panting and trembling under Quinn’s touch. Heat burns through his blood, slowly wearing his patience down. It takes every ounce of self-restraint he has to keep his fingers moving slow while Eliot squirms his hips, pressing one hand to Eliot’s hipbone to try hold him still. “Be patient, darlin’.”

Eliot huffs, but stops squirming. “Can’t believe I’m hearing those words from your mouth.”

“Excuse you, I’m plenty patient when the occasion calls for it.” Quinn cuts off any argument Eliot might have against that by adding a third finger. Something awfully sentimental blooms in his chest when Eliot covers the hand gripping his hip with one of his own, a nameless emotion rushing through him when Eliot squeezes his hand firmly. “I was patient enough to wait for you, wasn’t I?”

Eliot huffs a breathless laugh at his words, but doesn’t properly answer until Quinn finally pulls his fingers out of him. “Thank you, by the way.”

“Hmm?” Quinn looks up from where he’s rolling a condom on, and sees Eliot’s eyes soft and warm as they meet his. His heart rate triples at the naked emotion on Eliot’s face. “For what?”

“For waiting for me,” Eliot says.

Quinn nearly forgets to breathe for a moment because of how his chest tightens at those words. He takes a moment while slicking himself up with the lube to remember how to collect himself, and his voice rasps a little when he says, “It was worth the wait.”

He lines himself up and looks up to meet Eliot’s gaze, and then he doesn’t look away as he pushes inwards, slow and steady, until he’s bottoming out, hips flush against Eliot’s ass.

“Fuck,” Quinn breathes, lost in the snug, damp heat surrounding his cock, and then a jolt of pleasure ratchets up his spine when Eliot clenches tight around him. 

“C’mon, Quinn.” Eliot’s pupils are blown so wide that the blue is nearly taken over entirely by black. “I ain’t gonna break.”

Quinn laughs, bracing one arm against the bed and leaning down to kiss Eliot, licking deep into his mouth, making an appreciative sound when the hand not covering Quinn’s comes up to fist the curls at the back of his head, pulling just tight enough to send a frisson of heat through Quinn’s blood. He rocks his hips forward, making Eliot moan into his mouth, and then he breaks away from the kiss to suck a dark mark on the side of Eliot’s neck. 

He fucks Eliot with shallow, steady thrusts as he bites into Eliot’s shoulders, scraping his teeth against the skin above Eliot’s collarbones, dragging choked moan after breathless groan from Eliot’s throat. It’s only when Quinn starts feeling the tension pull tight in the pit of his stomach that he pushes himself up and hovers over Eliot, admiring the darkening marks on Eliot’s skin.

He pulls nearly all the way out, then thrusts back in hard, right at the angle that makes Eliot’s whole body jolt, clenching down hard, and he repeats the motion again and again, feeling the heat build up inside of him every time Eliot squeezes around Quinn’s cock.

Eventually, he moves his hand from Eliot’s hip to wrap it around his cock, pumping it fast and rough, listening to the way Eliot’s moans taper off into harsh exhales. While Quinn sometimes get a little loud in bed, Eliot never does. He tends to get even quieter when he’s about to come, and that's how Quinn knows that Eliot’s just on the verge of coming undone.

“Come on, darlin’,” Quinn coaxes, feeling the way Eliot tenses beneath him, almost there, right where Quinn wants him. “Wanna see you come for me.”

Then he snaps his hips forward hard, hitting Eliot’s prostate one more time, and then Eliot’s mouth opens on a near silent-moan as he comes all over Quinn’s hand, his head tilting back, baring his throat. Quinn fucks him through it, burying his face in the crook of Eliot’s neck, biting down as his own hips stutter. Soon enough, he comes as well, buried as deep as he can go inside Eliot. 

Just as Quinn’s getting his breath back, he feels Eliot press a kiss to his hair. Hears a low, husky voice say, “I missed you.”

Fuck. Quinn carefully lifts his head to find Eliot looking at him, his eyes full of an emotion Qiunn doesn’t dare put a name to yet. He swallows, then gives Eliot a shaky smile. “I missed you, too.”

Eliot pulls him in for a slow, filthy kiss that makes Quinn’s blood simmer with residual heat, and Quinn has to break away with a reluctant sigh so that he can pull out of Eliot before he goes fully soft. He ties off the condom and drops it into the bedside waste basket, and then dips down to kiss Eliot some more.

Eventually, Quinn grins against Eliot’s mouth and whispers, “Round two?”

“Your refractory period is insane,” Eliot says, but he tilts his hips up, one corner of his mouth hitching upwards as he brushes a kiss against Quinn’s lips. “Don’t go too easy on me this time.”

“Do you think Parker and Hardison would approve if you can’t walk straight tomorrow?” Quinn asks.

Eliot snorts. “They’d probably find it hilarious.”

Quinn smiles and runs his hands down Eliot’s sides, leaning in so that his lips brush against Eliot’s when he speaks. “Well then, what do you say? Wanna get fucked until you can’t walk properly?”

“Bring it,” Eliot challenges him, and bites into the kiss. 

-

“Hot damn,” Hardison says, cracking up as Eliot limps into the living quarters above the brewpub the next day. His delighted eyes take in the bite marks peeking out from under Eliot’s shirt collar. “Somebody had a great night.”

Eliot seems caught between smug and disgruntled, so he settles for a begrudgingly satisfied sigh and leans against the arm of the couch where Parker’s sitting. “We sure did.”

Parker kneels up in her seat to examine Eliot closely, peeling away his shirt collar to check the skin under it. She smiles gleefully at the sight and pecks the corner of Eliot’s mouth. “Did he break you?”

“He did not,” Eliot says, raising an eyebrow.

“He did, just a little,” Parker says. She turns and beams at Quinn. “Good job!”

Quinn smirks. “My pleasure.”

“I bet it was,” Hardison says with a shit-eating grin. Then he notices the duffle bag Quinn’s still holding, and he raises both eyebrows. “You leaving? Already?”

“Got some stuff to take care of.” For once, it’s not because Quinn is avoiding them. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back soon enough.”

Seemingly satisfied with that answer, Hardison nods. “Okay, gotcha.”

Parker points at him. “Don’t take too long. Come back soon!”

“I’ll do my best,” Quinn promises.

With that said, Hardison and Parker wave him off as he goes back downstairs, Eliot following him out, and once again, they’re standing in front of the doorway to HQ, looking at each other. This time, though, Quinn doesn’t feel torn up about it. All he feels is a warm, heady satisfaction at the way Eliot limps, the way dark marks color his neck and collarbones. He feels secure in the fact that he’ll return here soon, and that Eliot will welcome him back with a kiss.

“Don’t miss me too much,” Quinn says with a grin.

Eliot huffs a laugh, stepping closer. In a quiet voice, he admits, “I always miss you too much.”

Then he’s tugging Quinn into a kiss by his necktie, slow and sweet. Quinn kisses back enthusiastically, and when they break apart, they’re both smiling.

When Quinn opens the door and walks away, it doesn’t hurt. 

He knows this is the place he’ll always come back to.


	6. Chapter 6

When Quinn returns to Portland, he’s not alone.

“You were gone for so long! I told you not to take too long,” Parker tells him with a poke to the chest after she meets him at the brewpub’s entrance. Then she cocks her head and looks at the young woman standing by Quinn’s side. “Who is this?”

“I was only gone for three weeks,” Quinn says with a tired smile. He understands Parker, though. It feels good to be back here after the grueling few weeks he’s been away. “And this is Inaya Sharif.” He musters a sheepish smile. “I was thinking she could be our newest client?”

Parker stares at him for a moment, just long enough for him to feel nervous about whether he made the wrong move, but then she breaks into a giddy smile. “Okay, get in here, tell me everything!”

As Parker ushers them inside and makes them settle down at a table, Inaya shoots Quinn an anxious look. “Is this really a good idea?”

“It’s a great one,” Quinn assures her. He doesn’t feel even the slightest hint of doubt when he looks her in the eye and smiles. “This team is the best you’ll ever meet.”

-

“So, Inaya Sharif,” Hardison says when the four of them are gathered at the table and watching the screens. Inaya is squirreled away in a safehouse that the team helpfully provided, and now it’s time to go over all the information Inaya provided, supplemented by Hardison’s research. “Normal girl, your average copy editor from Pakistan, nothing super notable _except_ for the fact that her daddy happens to be Muzdahir Sharif, a.k.a. one of the most notorious crime lords in Karachi. His organization specializes in arms smuggling, but they also do assassinations and drug trafficking on the side.”

“Inaya isn’t interested in being involved in her father’s illegal activities, so she’s been doing her best to put some distance between herself and the family business,” Quinn adds. “She’s a civilian.”

Hardison nods. “Yeah, she’s squeaky clean. Apparently left her house when she became eighteen, cut off ties with her parents and all.”

“Okay, so why is she here now?” Eliot asks, because he’s the only one who hasn’t heard the full story yet.

“Inaya’s older brother was recently gunned down during a turf war between her father’s organization and a competing cartel.” Quinn watches understanding dawn on Eliot as he connects the dots. “She doesn’t have any other siblings.

“He needs an heir,” Eliot says.

Hardison clicks his clicker, bringing up the next set of images, showing phone call logs and scanned documents. “He’s been trying to get her to come back home. Even sent a lawyer after her with all kinda of bullshit to scare her into giving in, but she’s managed to hold out so far.”

“Just a matter of time before things get extreme, though,” Quinn says. “She needed to get out, and I owed her a favor.”

Eliot raises an eyebrow. “How does she know you?” 

“I was actually her bodyguard for a couple months a few years ago, back when she was still living with her family. There was some kind of gang war going on and her father hired me until it was over.” It hadn’t been very fun; Quinn had never been exactly great with teenagers, and he’d had a hard time earning Inaya’s trust until he’d taken a bullet for her. But in the end, it’d been a job that had left him with a sense of fulfillment. The sense that he did something worthwhile, for once. “And for the record: that’s all I did. I didn’t do any other work for him.”

Parker leans over the table to look at him. “Does the dad know you’re the one who got her out of the country and into the US?”

“Honestly? No idea.” Quinn wouldn’t be surprised if he knew. Muzdahir had a lot of eyes and ears on the street. “At any rate, he’ll still remember me, and he’ll probably know that she’s here by now.”

“Forget _probably_ ,” Hardison injects. “He definitely knows.” He clicks his clicker and brings up the profiles of four different men on the screens. “These are all Sharif’s men, and they just landed in JFK today. Hopefully they just get lost in New York City and don’t make it all the way here, but I wouldn’t be surprised if PDX sees them in a day or two.”

Damn. Quinn had been careful to cover their tracks, and he’d definitely took the roundabout way to confuse anybody trying to follow them, but there was only so much he could do on short notice with a civilian who was already on a tightly surveilled leash. Especially since he recognized at least two of the men on the screens. He points at the first one. “That one’s a professional. Used to be a Maroon Beret.”

Eliot makes a displeased sound. “Then he’s good enough to know that you guys aren’t in New York City.”

“A Maroon what?” Parker asks.

“Maroon Beret. It’s what they call members of the Special Service Group for the Pakistan Army. They do all kinds of spec ops.” Quinn points at the other man that he recognizes. “That one’s former military too. I think he was Navy, but I’m not sure.”

Hardison clicks his clicker again, this time bringing up pictures of Sharif, shaking hands with the local politicians of Karachi. “This guy has a lot of people in his pocket. He’s probably got enough strings to pull to get our client deported or something along those lines. And I’m guessin’ he’ll pull every string to get her back.”

“What are the odds of him giving up if it takes too long to find her?” Parker asks.

“Little to none.” Quinn remembers Muzdahir as a stubborn man. One who got angered easily if things didn’t go his way, although he was patient enough to not do anything rash without thinking things through. 

“Men like that don’t get where they are by giving up easily,” Eliot says.

Hardison frowns. “We can’t have our client just living in hiding indefinitely. If he’s as serious about this as you say he is, it’s only a matter of time before he finds her. And we can’t provide lifelong, round-the-clock protection service like witness protection.”

“No, we can’t,” Parker says slowly, narrowing her eyes at the screen. “So we have to make him give up.”

Hardison raises an eyebrow, looking puzzled. “How?”

“What’s the fastest way to make somebody give up on stealing something?” Parker asks.

Quinn figures it out as soon as the words are out of her mouth. He tastes the irony on his tongue as he says, “You destroy it.”

Eliot gets it immediately. “We’re gonna need to be real convincing, with a guy like that.”

“Destroy?” Hardison asks. “Like, kill?” He blinks, then groans. “Oh my god, we’re doing this again.”

Parker grins. “Let’s go steal a death!”

-

Quinn is looking out the window of the brewpub’s guest room when he hears a knock on the door. “Come in.”

Eliot opens the door, holding two bottles of beer, and Quinn smiles, turning away from the window to accept a bottle that Eliot offers him. As soon as the bottle is in Quinn’s possession, Eliot closes a hand around Quinn’s wrist and tugs him closer for a kiss.

Quinn’s eyes flutter shut as he presses his mouth to Eliot’s, relaxing into the contact until Eliot pulls away, just an inch, and smiles at him. “Didn’t get to do that earlier, so. Welcome back.”

“I’m feeling very welcomed,” Quinn teases. He straightens up and glances around the room. “Seriously, though. It got a lot nicer in here.”

The guest room has been completely overhauled since Quinn was last inside it. It’s acquired a new set of curtains, a dark navy blue layer of paint on the walls, and a luxurious queen-sized bed has replaced the former twin-sized one. Even the rest of the furniture—such as the bedside table and the dresser sitting opposite of the bed, hell, even the rug spread over the hardwood floor—has been upgraded to match the blue-and-white color scheme. 

“Figured we could make the place more comfortable,” Eliot says with a grin. He twists the cap off his beer, and Quinn follows suit so that they can tap their bottles together. “You like it?”

“I definitely love the new bed.” Quinn really does like it. It’s very comfortable, with a soft throw blanket tossed over the soft covers, and the pillows are ridiculously fluffy, which suits Quinn’s tastes very well. He also thinks it would be a fantastic place to have sex on. He winks at Eliot. “And the company.”

Eliot snorts and takes a swig of his beer, which is pretty much the exact reaction Quinn was expecting. They both turn to look out the window for a moment, and then Eliot says, “You owed her a favor, huh?”

“Long story short, she saved me a lot of hassle around the time I finished the job as her bodyguard.” Quinn shrugs. “Her brother didn’t like me. Wanted me dealt with.”

“Guess you ain’t feeling all too bad about him getting gunned down.”

Quinn huffs a small laugh. “You could say that.” He pauses. “She wasn’t on good terms with him, either. She risked pissing him off by giving me the heads up and the time to get away.”

“Brave girl,” Eliot comments.

“She sure is.” Quinn swallows down a mouthful of beer and contemplates the quiet, dark streets of Portland as he thinks about the bare bones of the con they’ve constructed so far. “Still, I kinda wish there were better options for her. It isn’t easy to leave your whole life behind.”

From the corner of his eye, he sees Eliot turn his head to look at Quinn. “She’ll make it. You did.”

“Well, I had some help.” He thinks of his teenage years, constantly on the move across too many countries to count, learning every trick he could for his survival, the grip of a gun too familiar in his hands. The only constant through the years being a woman who didn’t know how to love him except to teach him everything she knew. “Besides, I’m not exactly anybody’s best case scenario.”

Eliot takes another swig of his beer, then says, “I know it wasn’t easy for you, and you might disagree, but you’re the best case scenario to me.”

Quinn turns to grin at Eliot, who raises both eyebrows at him, daring him to say something. Which, of course Quinn does. “Darlin’, your lines are way too cheesy.”

“They always work on you anyway,” says Eliot, unrepentant. There’s a glint of humor in his eyes, but there’s also a soft kind of affection that Quinn happens to see a lot whenever they touch upon Quinn’s past. Like Eliot treasures every bit of Quinn that’s been hidden away for so long. 

With a sigh, Quinn leans in to press a brief kiss to Eliot’s lips. “Just for that, I’m not having sex with you until this job is over.”

“What about just sleeping?” Eliot’s hand wraps around Quinn’s wrist once more, this time simply holding him, rubbing small circles over Quinn’s pulse point with a thumb. Quinn feels his breath catch at the sensation. “You mind if I stay with you tonight?”

“As if I’d ever mind that,” Quinn says, his voice remarkably steady despite the way his breath hitches in his chest at the way Eliot’s thumb slides inwards from his pulse point, just under the cuff of Quinn’s sleeve. 

A satisfied smile curls along Eliot’s mouth. “Good.” 

Then Eliot leans in to steal a kiss, licking into Quinn’s mouth slow and wet, and Quinn thinks that this is truly the best scenario: getting to keep Eliot Spencer.

-

The con is relatively simple, but also complicated as hell. The gist of it is easy enough: get Inaya’s pursuers to believe she’s dead. It’s the execution of it that’s hard, because these men are not going to fall for anything less than perfectly convincing. Leaving even the slightest margin for error could leave Muzdahir with enough hope that his daughter is still alive and he might continue searching for her. They need to give Muzdahir’s men irrefutable proof that Inaya is dead, without actually providing them with a body. 

Suffice to say, Hardison isn’t pleased with the fact that he’s the one who has to come up with the science for this one.

“You know, at some point, y’all are gonna make me straight-up Frankenstein somebody,” Hardison says as he mixes up a batch of fake blood. “I’ll bring a damn man back from the dead and y’all wouldn’t even applaud for me. _Ungrateful_.”

“Does he always do that?” Quinn asks, amused. He’s been planning tactical assault strategies with Eliot over a printed map of Portland while Hardison’s been slaving away at his workbench, but it’s difficult to concentrate when a sulky genius is narrating his woes aloud from the other side of the room. This is the first time Quinn’s actually joined in on a con that requires Hardison to be more creative than usual—he’s heard the stories about how unhinged Hardison can get when he’s been put up to pulling off the impossible, but he hadn’t expected it to be this relentless—and he’s torn between impressed by Hardison’s genius and being annoyed by it. Probably both.

“Yeah, he does,” Eliot says, sounding exasperated and just a tiny bit fond. And then to Hardison: “This can’t be harder than that time you made the fake bodies for the job we did at Highpoint Tower.”

Hardison squawks. “It can’t—are you serious? Those were supposed to _not_ pass the dead body test. This one has to actually pass!”

Just as Hardison starts to ramble, getting faster and more indignant with every passing second, Eliot sighs and goes over to him. He puts both hands on Hardison’s shoulders and pushes him down so that he’s sitting, his back hunched over as Eliot leans in and murmurs something into his ear. It seems to calm Hardison down, and soon he’s nodding along to Eliot’s words.

“Okay, yeah, I got this.” Hardison lets out a long exhale and straightens up in his seat. “Damn right I got this.”

“There we go,” Eliot says, and gives Hardison a quick kiss. Then Hardison bounces back onto his feet, ready to work, and Eliot’s walking back to where Quinn is waiting, shaking his head. “He needs positive reinforcement.” He rolls his eyes and adds in a lower voice, “In small doses.”

“Can’t imagine what would go wrong with a large dose,” Quinn jokes.

Eliot’s deep sigh contains multitudes of suffering. “You really don’t wanna experience it.”

Quinn is about to prod Eliot for more details when Parker comes in, holding a laptop with a scowl on her face. “They’re here.”

“Yeah, well, we expected them to show up soon,” Eliot says, checking the screen to see that the alert system Hardison set up has flagged all four of Muzdahir’s men at PDX. 

“Problem is, they’re not the only ones,” Parker says, and she clicks another window to show another person that Hardison’s system flagged at PDX. 

It’s Muzdahir himself.

Quinn whistles. “Somebody’s very confident that his daughter is here.”

“And real determined to get her back with his own two hands,” Eliot adds, crossing his arms as he frowns at the screen. 

“Does this mean we have to change the plans?” Hardison asks, coming up from behind them to join their little huddle around the laptop. 

“We don’t have to,” Quinn says. “Could be more convincing if he’s there to witness things firsthand.”

Hardison hums. “I mean, I’d say it’s kinda cold-blooded to make a guy witness his daughter’s death so soon after losing his son, but.” He pauses thoughtfully. “He shouldn’t have been a crime lord in the first place.”

“Should’ve left his daughter alone when she refused to go back,” Eliot says with a decisive nod. 

Quinn adds his two cents. “His son got killed in a shootout with a rival cartel anyway, it’s not like he was an innocent victim.”

“Aha!” That’s when Parker looks up with a triumphant grin. “Rivals. We need rivals.”

The mischievous, calculating look in her eyes has Quinn feeling that things are about to get very, very interesting. “Care to explain?”

“The cartel,” Parker says, which explains nothing. She shoots a sly look at Quinn. “Want to play the messenger?”

“Sounds like I’m gonna get shot.” He’s only half-kidding. “Yeah, I’m up for it.”

-

Fortunately, Quinn does not get shot. 

He does, however, narrowly avoid getting stabbed in the neck by an angry ex-Maroon Beret, and also gets threatened with a semi-automatic by a high-ranking cartel member, so that’s fun. 

The con hinges on having Quinn play the middle-man. The team managed to trick members of Muzdahir’s rival cartel to follow him to Portland by making them believe he’s here to make allies that will prove useful in eliminating his business rivals, including the cartel. In the meantime, Quinn’s managed to convince Muzdahir that he’s actually working on behalf of the cartel, who want to use Inaya as a negotiating chip that can be eliminated if necessary. Quinn’s job is to string along both parties using different lies, eventually convincing all of them that the other side is in Portland specifically to wage war with the opposing side.

It helps that Eliot and Parker are providing support by engineering random attacks against both parties; Parker nearly runs over a cartel member over with a car, while Eliot makes use of remote miniature explosives stuck to the walls of a building to make it seem like somebody is shooting at Muzdahir on the street.

Eventually, things escalate to Inaya getting publicly kidnapped on the street in front of Muzdahir, dragged into an unmarked van with a scream, culminating in Muzdahir taking his men to face off against the cartel in a warehouse where Inaya is tied up and gagged in the van.

Muzdahir gets one good look at Inaya’s terrified face before the van explodes.

“This is going well,” Quinn comments from where he’s huddled behind a stack of crates further down the warehouse. He’s impressed with Hardison’s work at rigging the whole set-up so that Inaya gets pulled out of the van right before it explodes, leaving a charred replacement body that’ll be impossible to ID. 

From beside him, Inaya gives him a concerned look while her father’s goons and the cartel members get in a shootout. “What if this isn’t enough?”

“Oh, don’t worry. Your father’s not going to be looking for you while he’s got his hands busy with other matters.” Quinn grins at her, then hears the sound of police sirens outside. “Oh, look who’s here.”

Police start flooding the building, Parker and Hardison amongst them in their FBI jackets. Quinn grins as he sneaks Inaya out the back exit, flashing a US Marshall badge at the police officers, then indicating Inaya. “Federal witness. We gotta move her quickly before our location is compromised again.”

The police officers stutter and move for Quinn to hurry and get Inaya into Lucille, where Eliot’s waiting for them. Not long after, Hardison and Parker join them, and Eliot starts driving away.

“Got ‘em all arrested for a whole ton of charges,” Hardison reports gleefully. “And Muzdahir’s connections ain’t good enough in the US to get him out of this pickle, so he’s gonna be behind bars for a longass time.”

“Plus, we got this,” Parker says, holding up the briefcase full of cash that Muzdahir had brought for the hostage exchange. She offers it to Inaya. “It’s yours now.”

“A fresh start for a new life,” Quinn says.

Inaya takes the briefcase hesitantly. “I don’t know if I can do this,” she says, looking terrified and hopeful all at once. “How do you make a whole new life from scratch?”

“Well, we’re giving you a hell of a starter kit.” Hardison pulls out a thick envelope. “We have your new passport, IDs, bank accounts—everything you’re gonna need. And if shit gets hard, you know our number.”

Inaya accepts the envelop with shaky hands, but a sturdy kind of determination is settling into her eyes. Seeing that, Quinn says, “You’re smart. You’ll work it out.” And it feels natural as breathing to add, “You’ll do a better job at this second shot at life thing than I did.”

He can feel Hardison and Parker staring at him at this new information, but he focuses on Inaya, who smiles at him gratefully. “Yeah,” she says, clinging onto her bravery, reminding Quinn of when he received his new name. “I’ll work it out.”

When Quinn looks away, he finds Hardison and Parker grinning at him. In the front, Eliot glances at him through the rearview mirror, smiling with wordless pride, and Quinn thinks that he could do this for the rest of his life.

-

“Next time, I vote that we take a job that does not involve organized crime,” Hardison says as they relax in the living area over the brewpub after their post-victory dinner. “Something with no guns involved.”

“You didn’t even go near any guns this time,” Eliot points out. 

Parker huffs. “Guns are easier than Sterankos.”

“A Steranko does not have bullets that will _kill_ me.” Hardison looks around the table. “Aw, hell no, y’all prefer a job involving guns over one with a Steranko?”

“I’ve never beaten one,” Quinn points out. “At least I know how to disarm a gun.”

“We’ll beat another one sometime,” Parker says, like she’s happy to challenge one of the world’s nastiest security systems just for the thrill of it. “Then you’ll know how fun it is.”

“Let’s save that one for a special occasion,” Eliot says, sounding a little pained. Apparently he’d really rather not face a Steranko unless it’s absolutely necessary. 

They chatter more about security systems they’ve beaten and potential jobs that might be easier to pull off, and soon enough Parker is yawning. Then it’s pretty clear it’s time to call it a night. 

Quinn’s just finished taking a shower in the guest bedroom’s en-suite bathroom when he hears a knock. “Hold on.”

He pulls on a pair of fresh underwear and sleep pants before he answers the door, and finds Eliot leaning up against the doorway. His eyes immediately drop to Quinn’s bare chest, and Quinn feels a smug kind of satisfaction flicker in his gut at the way Eliot subconsciously licks his lips, eyes going dark with interest.

“You need something?” Quinn asks, though he’s pretty sure he knows what Eliot wants.

Eliot raises an eyebrow. “The job’s over.”

“And?” Quinn asks with a mock-innocent grin, which makes Eliot give him an unimpressed look. 

They’d spent the first two nights of Quinn’s stay sleeping in the same bed, but Eliot had kept initiating makeout sessions that would escalate to the point where Quinn would barely keep himself from rolling Eliot onto his back so he could ride Eliot’s dick. So Quinn had kicked him out after the second night, forcing Eliot to spend the rest of the con sleeping with Hardison and Parker instead, because Quinn had been pretty adamant about not having sex until the con was finished. He hated going back on his word, and he knew Eliot would hold it over him for ages if he did.

“Just have sex already,” Parker says, popping up behind Eliot out of nowhere. “He’ll be grumpy if you say no.”

“Put the man out of his misery,” Hardison yells from the other side of the living space, and Eliot pinches the bridge of his nose with a growl.

Quinn laughs. “Alright, alright.” He winks at Parker. “Good night, Parker.”

She grins at him, “Night!” Then she pecks Eliot’s cheek quickly before dashing away. “Have fun!”

“Is this gonna be a thing?” Eliot asks as Quinn lets him in and closes the door behind him. “No sex during jobs?”

Quinn rolls his eyes. “It’s not like we have a lot of time for sex when we’re on the job.”

“I know that,” Eliot grumbles. “But sometimes there’s just a bit of time.”

“Enough time for me to suck you off between prep sessions? I suppose so,” Quinn says, and he can tell by the hitch in Eliot’s breathing that this is something Eliot would be very much up for. Quinn gives him a sly smile. “I’ll think about it.” He takes in the sight of Eliot in a teeshirt and jeans, thinking about how easy it would be to unzip Eliot’s fly and pull out his cock. “Want me to blow you right now?”

Eliot steps closer, right into Quinn’s space, pressing a warm hand to the center of Quinn’s chest. “Maybe later.” He leans in, sliding his hand downwards past Quinn’s stomach, tilting his head so that his lips brush against Quinn’s when he says, “Last time you did all the work. Figured I should return the favor tonight.”

Then Eliot’s hand slides under the waistband of Quinn’s sleep pants and squeezes his cock.

Quinn inhales sharply, his hips jerking at the stimulation, then he’s closing the distance between them, kissing Eliot with a hunger that’s been eating away at him for a whole week now, licking into Eliot’s mouth with a groan as Eliot squeezes his cock again. He’s half-hard when Eliot pulls his hand and mouth away from Quinn, instead sliding his hand back up to press against Quinn’s sternum, forcing Quinn a step backwards. Then Eliot shoves him hard, and Quinn allows himself to topple backwards onto the bed, watching with rapt attention as Eliot strips off his own teeshirt before he places a knee on the mattress between Quinn’s thighs and leans down to kiss him again.

Quinn feels fingers hooking into the waistband of his briefs and automatically lifts his hips, at which Eliot straightens up and pulls off Quinn’s pants and underwear in one go. Quinn feels another flush of satisfaction as Eliot admires his naked body, and shamelessly spreads his knees for Eliot to get a better look. 

“Lay down on the bed properly,” Eliot says after another minute of blatant appreciation. “Where’s the lube?”

“Bedside table drawer,” Quinn answers, rolling upright to pull the covers down and situate himself more comfortably so that he’s not sprawled horizontally across the bed. He watches Eliot grab the lube and a handful of condoms from the drawer and feels an anticipatory heat flush through him. Licking his lips, Quinn wraps a hand around his cock and pumps it once slow and easy, then catches Eliot looking at him with instant ravenous interest. Grinning, Quinn rolls his hips upwards, fucking up into his fist again. “Didn’t you say something about doing all the work?”

“You’re a menace,” Eliot informs him flatly, dropping the supplies on the bed before he unzips his jeans, kicking them off so that all he’s wearing is his underwear. He climbs onto the bedand smacks Quinn’s hand off his cock. “No more touching yourself.”

Quinn huffs but complies, instead looping his arms around Eliot’s neck to pull him in for a lazy kiss, reveling in the warm weight of Eliot pressing him down into the mattress as callused hands roam over his skin, running up his sides and roving over his shoulders. One hand settles at the side of Quinn’s neck to tilt his jaw up with a thumb so that their mouths fit better, deepening the kiss into something filthy.

Just as Quinn starts to grow impatient enough to roll his hips up, Eliot pulls away, biting Quinn’s lower lip and giving it one last tug and lick before he moves down, kissing down the line of Quinn’s jaw and neck, pausing for a moment to suck a mark that’ll show right above Quinn’s shirt collar later. 

From there Eliot takes his time marking Quinn up, using his teeth liberally as he makes his way down Quinn’s chest, licking a nipple and sucking it while he pinches the other one. Quinn’s breath catches in his chest as he squirms at the sensation. Eliot spares another minute to lick him there, then moves down to press a kiss to Quinn’s sternum, making his way down Quinn’s stomach.

For a moment, Quinn thinks Eliot’s about to suck him off, but instead Eliot pushes one of Quinn’s knees aside to kiss the skin where leg meets groin, and Quinn feels his whole body flush. “You fucking tease.”

Eliot smothers a chuckle against the skin of Quinn’s inner thigh, which should not be as arousing as it is, and then he presses an open-mouthed kiss there, laving his tongue over sensitive skin in a way that makes Quinn shiver. “We’ve got all night, sweetheart. No need to rush.”

Then Eliot bites down.

“Fuck,” Quinn hisses, his cock twitching as Eliot carefully litters bite marks across the insides of Quinn’s thighs, where nobody else will get to see them. Quinn stifles a moan as pain-edged flashes of pleasure burn through him, building up the tension in side him slow and steady.

“You can be louder,” Eliot says, pausing as he kisses his way down the inside of Quinn’s thigh, scraping his teeth against the inside of Quinn’s knee. “This place is soundproof.”

Quinn raises an eyebrow at him. “You’re gonna have to work harder if you want me to be louder, darlin’.”

“I can do that,” Eliot says with a small smile, then wraps a hand around Quinn’s cock.

“Shit.” Quinn’s hips buck at the sudden touch, but Eliot doesn’t seem to mind. Instead, his free hand grabs a condom packet, and then Quinn’s treated to the sight of Eliot ripping the packet open with his teeth.

Eliot rolls the condom onto Quinn quickly, and soon Eliot’s licking a hot stripe up Quinn’s cock, pausing to press a slow, wet kiss to the head of it before he swallows Quinn down. Quinn’s hips buck upwards again, seeking more of the damp heat of Eliot’s mouth, but Eliot holds him down with one forearm across Quinn’s hips, keeping them immobile while he patiently sucks Quinn off. 

Quinn exhales shakily and threads one hand through Eliot’s hair, gripping it just tight enough to sting, which makes Eliot hum in approval around his cock, sending a pleasant zing through Quinn’s nervous system. He doesn’t try to shove Eliot down onto his cock though, and simply holds on, watching Eliot bob his head up and down. He can feel Eliot’s tongue pressing flat against the underside of his cock, slowly sliding up the frenulum to lick at the glans, and Quinn utters another curse under his breath at the rush of pleasure he feels at that.

Then he feels a slick finger press against his perineum, sliding back towards the cleft of his ass, and before he can even tense up, it’s slowly entering him. 

“Fuck,” Quinn says, tensing up at the intrusion, but then Eliot does something with his tongue that has him swearing and distracted from the penetration enough that Eliot’s slid not one, but two fingers in all the way to the knuckle before Quinn’s fully processed things.

Quinn’s starting to feel the tension coil in his stomach as Eliot sucks his cock and pumps his fingers into him, a slow crescendo of pleasure singing through him as he starts to tremble. He’s torn between wanting to thrust up into the heat of Eliot’s mouth or rock his hips down onto Eliot’s fingers, but he can’t move, not with Eliot holding him down. Part of him _likes_ being pinned down like this—though he’d rather get shot than admit that aloud—so he doesn’t try to break out of Eliot’s hold, even though his patience is being shredded apart and he’s so fucking _close_.

Then Eliot crooks his fingers, pressing them right against the spot that makes white-hot pleasure lick up his spine, and then Quinn’s entire body jerks as his back arches, straining against Eliot’s hold as he comes with a choked moan.

Eliot keeps sucking him through it, his fingers holding still as Quinn clenches around them, until the sensation becomes too much, at which point Quinn tugs at Eliot’s hair to pull him off his softening cock. The aftershocks are still dying down when Eliot kisses his way up Quinn’s body, capturing Quinn’s mouth for a slow, filthy kiss as he runs one palm soothingly up and down Quinn’s side. It takes a couple minutes, but finally Quinn relaxes entirely, sighing into Eliot’s mouth as he runs his own hands down Eliot’s bare back, sliding them under the waistband of Eliot’s boxer briefs to that he can grope Eliot’s ass and pull him in. 

Eliot allows it for a minute, and then he’s pulling away, settling back onto his heels and peeling Quinn’s condom off to tie it and throw it into the waste basket. Quinn watches Eliot strip off his own underwear, then rip open another packet and roll a condom onto his own cock. He feels anticipation flare hot in his blood when Eliot lines himself up. “Seriously? Now?”

“Yes, now.” Eliot presses the head of his cock to Quinn’s entrance, and Quinn’s oversensitive enough to shudder at the way Eliot’s teases his rim, just shy of actually entering him. “Relax, sweetheart.”

Then he’s easing his cock into Quinn in one slow push, and Quinn can’t stop the shaky moan that erupts from his mouth. Fuck, he’d nearly forgotten how good it feels to have Eliot inside him, how fucking _thick_ he is, stretching Quinn open in a way that aches even when Quinn’s relaxed and pliant from orgasm. It’s made worse by how damn oversensitive Quinn is right now, and by the time Eliot’s fully seated inside of him, he’s feeling like a string pulled too tight. Every touch too close to setting him on fire.

“You kinky bastard,” Quinn grumbles, because he should’ve known this would happen. Eliot likes to fuck him right after Quinn’s come once already. Probably because he loves to see Quinn writhe in overstimulation. “How the fuck am I supposed to relax like this?”

Eliot laughs, tugging up Quinn’s right hand to press a kiss to the knuckles, which makes something flutter in Quinn’s chest. “Just let me take care of you, gorgeous.”

Fuck, Quinn hates it when Eliot breaks out the rarer pet names, because Quinn’s reactions to those are embarrassing. Like right now, when he feels his skin flush hot with a wild blush, flooding from his cheeks down his neck, and he instinctively clenches down on Eliot’s cock with a near-silent whimper. 

“Yeah, you’re fucking gorgeous like this,” Eliot says, because he might be quiet during sex for the most part, but he also has a habit of running his mouth when he’s got his cock inside Quinn. It’s not like he’s really thinking shit through when he’s talking; while Quinn tends to calculate and strategically deploy his dirty talk, Eliot’s more of an instinctive talker, simply saying whatever comes to his mind. And whatever comes to his mind when he’s fucking Quinn tends to be either incredibly filthy or terribly complimentary. “You’re so good for me. So fucking perfect.”

Honestly, Quinn would rather take the dirty talk over the praise, because the burn of arousal he feels when Eliot tells him about all the filthy things he wants to do to Quinn is nothing compared to the wildfire in his chest when Eliot says these kinds of things. 

He’s trying to muster a smart reply to derail Eliot’s compliments, but then Eliot pulls out and snaps his hips forward, making the breath punch out of Quinn’s lungs. Eliot doesn’t even pause and simply repeats the gesture, thrusting into Quinn hard enough that Quinn’s brain goes completely blank from overstimulation. Every drag of Eliot’s cock inside him is another electric crackle through his nerves, every thrust that brushes past his prostate an avalanche of pleasure crashing down upon him. Eliot isn’t going particularly fast, but he’s not going slow enough for Quinn to collect his breath, either, so Quinn’s panting and trying to string three words together while Eliot keeps talking.

“You feel so good around my cock. Makes me wanna fuck you all the time. Sometimes I look at your stupid suits and wanna ruin them. Fuck you while you’re still wearing most of it and then strip it all off of you.” Eliot already has Quinn’s hips in a bruising grip, but then he digs his fingers in harder, the way Quinn likes. “God, I wanna just keep you here and wreck you til you can’t ever leave again.”

_Yes please_ , Quinn thinks, but the words don’t quite make it past his throat, cut off by a whine when Eliot nails his prostate once more.

Quinn’s dick is hard again, leaking precome all over his stomach, and he’s feeling that tug in his gut again, the one that precedes an oncoming orgasm, and he’s reaching a hand down when Eliot intercepts it. 

“No touching yourself, remember?” Eliot takes Quinn’s other hand for good measure and presses both hands into the mattress on either side of Quinn’s head, knitting their fingers together. It feels unbearably intimate like this, with Eliot hovering over Quinn, holding both of his hands. So much so that his whole body feels like it’s melting when Eliot leans in, nipping at Quinn’s earlobe before he whispers, “Want you to come from just my cock.”

“Fuck,” Quinn says, heart racing and face burning, and then he makes a terrible, awful noise when Eliot rocks his hips forward.

Eliot fucks him like that, firm and steady, maddeningly slow. Every thrust sends a hot lick of pleasure up Quinn’s spine, and soon he’s feeling that tightness in his lower belly, the sense of barely hanging onto a precipice, so close to letting go. He squeezes Eliot’s hands, looking up into blue eyes that hold so much tenderness that it makes Quinn ache all over, makes him want to have Eliot take him apart, piece by piece, then put him back together in a way that makes him irrevocably Eliot’s down to his bones. 

“I’m gonna—fuck— _Eliot_ ,” Quinn says, making no sense, but Eliot understands him anyway.

“C’mon, sweetheart.” Eliot’s breath is hot against Quinn’s mouth, lips brushing against his in a tantalizing mimicry of a kiss as he says, “Come for me.”

It takes a couple more thrusts, and then Quinn’s coming with a low whine, spurting over both their bellies as he hooks both ankles behind Eliot’s back to pull him in even closer. Eliot fucks him through the orgasm, then keeps going.

“I can’t, Eliot, you son of a bitch,” Quinn swears at him, and then adds a couple more insults in Italian and French and Russian for good measure. If he was oversensitive before, it’s nothing compared to right now. Now he’s hypersensitive, his whole nervous system overwhelmed with every slide of Eliot’s sweat-slick skin against his own, the pleasure too intense for him to handle, and his cock hurts from how it’s not been allowed to fully soften, instead hardening once again because of the relentless stimulation. Quinn feels like he’s shaking apart in his own skin. “It’s too much—”

“I’ve got you, baby,” Eliot says, and Quinn hates how his blood goes a little hotter at the pet name. “You’re gorgeous, so good, and all fucking _mine_.”

Eliot snaps his hips forward again, and Quinn can’t help the loud whine that escapes him. Can’t help but clutch Eliot’s hands as they clutch him back. Can’t help but just let Eliot take care of him, fucking into him until Quinn’s tipping over the edge one more time, his voice cracking open on a moan as his whole body tenses up and then collapses onto the bed sheets.

Three thrusts later, Eliot’s coming inside of Quinn with a groan, his hands squeezing Quinn’s tight. And then Eliot’s relaxing, practically collapsing on top of Quinn as he presses his full weight down on him, catching Quinn’s mouth for a lazy, indulgent kiss. 

After a couple minutes of kissing, Eliot releases Quinn’s hands and pulls out, dropping the tied off condom in the waste basket before he frowns down at their come-splattered stomachs. Then, he taps Quinn’s knee twice, a gesture that makes Quinn realize that he still has his legs hooked around Eliot’s waist. He unhooks them so that Eliot can walk into the bathroom, then return with a damp towel.

It’s only after Eliot’s wiped him down that Quinn regains a semblance of coherency. “Are we done?”

“Depends,” Eliot says, dumping the towel on the floor and settling in to sit up against the headboard so that Quinn’s head is beside his thigh. “I could probably go again in half an hour.”

“I hate your stamina,” Quinn tells him. 

Eliot chuckles, one hand threading through Quinn’s curls as he looks down with a gleam of good humor in his eyes. “You love my stamina.”

“Good thing I love more than your stamina,” Quinn mutters, and then the hand in his hair pauses. He glances up to see Eliot giving him an unreadable look. Not a bad one. Just, a very contemplative one. Quinn sighs. Oh, what the hell, he might as well say it. “Yes, Eliot, I’m talking about you in general.”

Eliot stares at him for a long moment, then raises an eyebrow. “Me in general? Really? That’s the best you can do?”

“Can you do any better?” Quinn asks. Eliot hesitates, and that’s enough for Quinn to snort. “Thought so.”

It’s not exactly disappointing. They already know that they’re the most important person in each other’s lives. Declarations of specific emotions aren’t a big deal compared to that. Quinn doubts Eliot will be ready to say the words out loud any time soon. That’s okay. Actions speak louder than words, in a hitter’s world, and Quinn hears the words clear as day when Eliot strokes his hair again.

Some things, though, are better spoken out loud. 

So Quinn says, “I’ve taken care of all my affairs now. Including all the favors I owe people.”

Eliot shoots him an inquisitive look. “All of them?”

“Okay, so maybe almost all of them,” Quinn amends as he sits up. “But I’ve spent three weeks getting my shit sorted.” He glances around the room that’s been refurbished during his absence. “And I’m guessing you guys didn’t redecorate this place just for fun.”

When he looks back at Eliot, there’s a hopeful, hesitant smile on Eliot’s face. “No, we didn’t.”

“Eliot,” Quinn says, exasperated and fond, moving so that he’s straddling Eliot’s lap. “You know how you said that you wanna keep me here and wreck me so that I can’t leave again?” 

“I might’ve said that.” Eliot’s cheeks are a little red.

“All you have to do is ask,” Quinn says, cupping Eliot’s cheek with one hand. “Just ask me to never leave again. Ask me to join the team and move in here. Ask me to stay.” He kisses Eliot, brief and chaste, then whispers against Eliot’s mouth, “Ask me.”

“Stay,” Eliot says, one hand settling on Quinn’s hip, the other sliding around the back of Quinn’s neck, pulling him in for a kiss. “Stay here with me.”

Quinn smiles. “I’m all yours, darlin’.”

-

The next day, Quinn’s sitting at breakfast with the team when Eliot breaks the news to Hardison and Parker. “Quinn said yes to moving in, by the way.”

Hardison grins. “Fuck yeah! Welcome to the team, buddy.”

“Finally,” Parker says. “How long will it take for you to get your stuff here?”

“Pretty much any time I want,” Quinn says with a shrug and a smile. “I already had all my stuff shipped to Portland. Just had to figure out where I was gonna live, but you guys had that figured out for me.”

Parker’s eyes sparkle. “Oh, of course. That’s why it took you so long to come back!” She cocks her head. “Was our latest client one of your loose ends?”

“She was one of my last outstanding favors.” Quinn has to admire how fast Parker connects the dots. “It was pretty good timing that I called her right when things were getting bad.”

“So it’s all done?” Hardison prods. “You’re staying now, right?”

There’s nowhere else Quinn would rather be. “Yeah,” he says with a smile. “I’m not going anywhere.”

They finish breakfast, talking about logistics for Quinn officially joining the team—there really isn’t much to do aside from bringing Quinn’s belongings to the brewpub; Hardison and Parker have already been preparing for this for a while now—and clear the table. Then, Parker nudges Eliot. 

“Eliot,” she says. “Bring the thing.”

“What thing?” She narrows her eyes at him, and Eliot blinks. “Oh, that thing. Hang on.”

Eliot disappears into the main bedroom while Hardison and Parker grin at each other, then turn to give Quinn matching sly smiles. Quinn can’t help but already feel amused. “Am I going to like the thing?”

“I mean, it’s not a totally big deal,” Hardison says in the voice of a man who thinks this is kind of a big deal. “But you’ll need ‘em.”

Eliot reappears soon enough, and all Quinn sees is a small envelope in his hands. He’s puzzled just for a second, but when Eliot hands him the envelope, he instinctively knows what’s in it.

“Oh.” He opens the envelope to find a set of keys and a keycard in the envelope, along with a phone that’s identical to the ones that the team uses. He looks up to see the team, _his_ team, grinning at him. He can’t help but smile back, his chest nearly bursting with how full it is. “Guess this means I’m stuck with you guys for good.”

“Yep,” Parker says, popping the _p_ sound, looking gleeful and satisfied, like she’s pulled off a theft she’s been planning for a very long time. “You’re ours, now.”

Quinn laughs. “I guess so.”

Hardison declares that this calls for a celebration and debates with Eliot over what to have for a celebratory dinner, while Parker starts planning for all the team activities that they’ve wanted to take Quinn on. Quinn excuses himself to go to his room to change into a suit and tuck his new keys into his pocket. 

He’s downstairs and got his hand on the door leading outside of HQ when Eliot calls his name. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I was thinking I’d just go to the storage unit and get my things right now,” Quinn calls back. He’s feeling impatient and giddy, ready to bring his things into his new home. 

“We’ll go get it with you later,” Hardison says.

“After lunch!” Parker yells.

Eliot appears at the top of the stairs, coming down just enough to look at Quinn and beckon to him. “Now get back here.”

Smiling, Quinn lets go of the door and goes up the stairs, where Eliot is waiting for him. And as Eliot reels him in for a kiss, Quinn thinks that everything he had to live through, everything he had to grow up with, all the years of running through the dark—they were worth it. All of it was worth reaching this: living here with this ridiculous team, becoming a part of this odd family, going on ridiculous jobs, fighting for something worthwhile. Being in love with a man who loves him back. 

“Kinda feels like a happy ending,” Quinn murmurs against Eliot’s lips.

“Dunno what you’re talking about,” Eliot says with a grin, slipping his hand into Quinn’s as he tugs him upstairs, towards home. “This is just the beginning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for sticking with me to the very end! Any and all comments are deeply appreciated. Please feed your local writer :) Also, if you're interested in talking about Eliot/Quinn, please come find me on Tumblr. 
> 
> Lastly: I have a bunch of E/Q fics already written and ready to go, so keep an eye out for regular postings. Next fic will be posted this coming Friday!

**Author's Note:**

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